High church, low turnout

Now the higgledy housing is long flattened. The neighbours are a bus station, a bypass and the Sainsbury supermarket with which it shares an access road.

The At Your Service column had visited on a December Sunday morning in 1995. "For every car heading for St Columba's," we observed, "there are 100 heading for John Sainsbury's."

Jane Smitheringale, said by the column to have been wearing a hyperbolic hat, had been the only member of the congregation who still lived in the parish. She died two years ago.

Now the small flock gathers from other parts of Teesside, drawn by memories, by what remains in the community spirit bottle and by St Columba's vertiginously High Church tradition.

"Fr Hooper used to tell us that if you're high you're nearer to heaven," Miss Smitheringale had said.

Fr Raymond Hooper, parish priest for 35 years, was attacked and robbed in his vicarage in August 1974 and died four weeks later. A murder charge was reduced to manslaughter.

Fr Stephen Cooper, incumbent for the past eight years, believes that St Columba's still has a town centre place. "The God we believe in is a God of surprises. We don't know what the future holds."

He is a Boro supporter and a member of the Campaign for Real Ale, walks the couple of miles to the pub where we meet on his day off, quaffs appreciatively a pint of Ringwood Bitter.

"Hampshire beer," he says.

The grant from the English Heritage Lottery Fund amounts to 75 per cent of the £177,000 needed to renew guttering, downcomers and other work generally on high.

"It's given everyone a great lift, but there's a temptation to think that's the end of our financial worries when in a sense it's just the beginning. We still have to raise another £40,000."

Can the expenditure be justified? "It's a building of historical and architectural interest and there are very few in the town centre," says Fr Cooper.

"Even if there are only a few of us, we have to pursue ways of preserving it. If it had been a tin hut, I suppose it would have disappeared long ago but people have a great attachment to it. They are very supportive and very faithful."

Parts of the church served until recently as a winter day centre for the homeless but funding ceased after five years. An area behind the altar is now used by Teesside's Greek Orthodox church.

The centenary is marked in June with a concert by the Apollo Male Voice Choir on June 7, an open day and exhibition of church and community life around Cannon Street on June 8 and a 6pm Mass with the Archbishop of York on Sunday June 9.

The Bishop of Whitby leads the service at 10am on June 16, followed by a centenary lunch in the Thistle Hotel.

"It will be a great period of celebration for everyone, a chance for people to look back upon life as it was," says the Vicar.

"I suppose that people only remember the good times. I like to think that they will come around again." High church, high hopes.

A POLICEMAN'S lot (cont.): We recalled two weeks back how Arthur Stephenson, the Coundon polliss 40 years ago, had been ordered to prosecute ten juveniles for playing hum-dum-dum (finger or thumb) on the pavement outside Valentino's Caf.

Ray Gibbon, stationed in West Hartlepool (your worships), was also a man under authority. With Ray, however, it was more a case of the tail wagging the dog.

A dog licence in the 1950s, and long before, cost 7/6d. Every three months the borough council would send to the police a list of those who had had a licence at the same time the previous year but hadn't renewed it.

Constabulary duty was to go walkies around the town, finding out why.

"After you'd plodded across West Hartlepool in all sorts of weather and found no one at home three times running you wrote 'Dog dead', at the same time offering a silent prayer that it wouldn't arise before resurrection day and bite one of the neighbours." Ray recalls.

He's now retired to Witton Gilbert, near Durham, found his pocket books from 1956-72 in a pile of old Stork Margarine boxes in the attic and has taken them down to be used in evidence in a diverting series - a sort of polliss's progress - in the village newsletter.

Despatched, at any rate, to collar errant dog owners, he pounded in West Hartlepool upon the door of Mrs Constance Olivia Murray in Millbank Road.

Mrs Murray pleaded poverty, that she was On the Parish (as they said at the time).

PC Gibbon said he'd be back next day: still no dog licence, still the policeman declined to show his teeth.

He gave her another 24 hours. "I just couldn't think that one poor little black and white terrier whose mistress was on the parish was worth the trouble of first a written report, then a summons and then taking her to court."

The following morning, reported the polliss's pocket book, Mrs Murray duly produced licence No. JH053109. It was 11.15am on Tuesday February 26 1957 - Mrs Murray's dog had finally had its day.

SINCE the Backtrack column is on the subs' bench for a week or so, it should be recorded that Mr Martin Robinson - for many years a Football League assistant referee - ran Manchester City's line for the first time on Sunday.

City, already first division champions, played Portsmouth. A 34,000 crowd gathered to salute Kevin Keegan's latest heroes.

The throng included Martin's three-year-old daughter Helen - cherubic, chatty, utterly charming - who amid all the pandemonium fell fast asleep after 35 minutes.

Martin, from Darlington, is perplexed. "I wouldn't care," he says, "but I hadn't even been telling her one of the bedtime stories about my refereeing career."

BACKTRACK also reported a couple of years ago on the formation of the Richmond Mavericks, a classical football team with the Latin motto "Non pedicari cupiunt" emblazoned across their chests.

On Monday night they lived up to their billing by clinching the Wensleydale League championship despite losing two early goals against Middleham. Non pedicari cupiunt? Translated, it means "They don't like it up 'em."

LAST week's note on Ernest Williamson, hirsute former owner of the Hallgarth Hotel in Coatham Mundeville and of other celebrated eating places in the region, brings confirmation that he now has homes in Chichester and France and is using his skills as a former woodwork master to do up an old farmhouse near Poitiers. Janice Crocker remains his partner. More, it's to be hoped, ere long.

WE are now sneaking a few days away, but will be back a week on Sunday in time for the 50th anniversary of Shildon Salvation Army's celebrated songster brigade and, the same weekend, for a mining and railways exhibition at the Gaunless Valley Heritage Centre in Butterknowle.

There'll be a 15ft by 3ft wall map taken from the 1856 Ordnance Survey, a model railway lay-out of the area, conducted walks, old photographs and a collection of railway documents, circa 1900, from Cockfield station.

"A keen and knowledgable gentleman will also hold a question and answer session on the area," adds Mike Heaviside, who may be indulging in a little self-praise.

There's lots more - May 4 and May 5, 11am-3pm, both days. More on the GVHT website - www.geocities.com/gaunless-valley.

The column, meanwhile, hopes at last to enjoy a pint in the most remote pub on the British mainland. More, with luck, on May 9.