At Your Service: Last prayers in the vanishing village

The minister talked of building on the past but not living in it, the faithful insisted that it wasn't all doom and gloom, the rest of us sang the familiar hymn about going one more step along the road.

"And it's from the old we travel to the new...."

Actually they travel from the old to the older yet. High House at Ireshopeburn, next village down, is just about the oldest Methodist church still standing. High, indeed, and handsome.

Once Wearhead had two chapels, Primitive and Wesleyan. Lanehead, further up and smaller still, had another two. John Wesley visited several times and found willing ears among the miners; the only time bishops of Durham came to Weardale, it was murmured, was when they wanted to hunt deer.

Even Burnhope, a handful of houses across the river, had its own Methodist chapel. The water board uses it for the reservoir cogs.

Now all five are gone, a way of life disappearing with them. Once Wearhead chapel had two Sunday services, sometimes 50 or more in. Latterly, there've been five.

Source for the goose, Wearhead probably needs no locating. Until 1954 it was the end of the think-I-can railway from Bishop Auckland, until two months ago it had a branch of the Penrith Co-op.

A notice in the window says that "Co-operative and social factors" had for years outweighed economic ones. No longer.

The Queens Head Hotel is long closed and even the little caf which replaced it; the butcher's, the baker's, the garage, the paper shop and the post office have gone, too. The village school has recently been reprieved, but cannot think long term.

Though the village hall has its coffee mornings and the playing field a modern pavilion - opened by Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge, local lad made Chief of the Defence Staff - uneasy lies Wearhead beneath the Pennines.

"It's like everywhere else, there's a static population," says Ivan Jones. "People grow older and those who move in still work away from here."

He's also a director of Penrith Co-op - "I don't think people expected it to re-open, they knew we couldn't continue like that" - and as a bit bairn was chapel organ blower, 7/6d ("and that's old money") a quarter.

"I wouldn't say it was an honour exactly, but when were 11 or 12 you were very happy to have it. Two services on Sundays and choir practice as well."

The dear old chapel, its end wall so patched and so pointed that it resembles a relief map of the Appalachians, could probably seat the entire adult population of the village and still have room for some kin folk.

It's a listed building, galleried and gallant, so old and unchanging that there are snecks on the doors and little mantraps for the unwary.

"If I'm not careful I'll break my neck, which would enliven the reports in certain newspapers," Les Hann, the affable minister, tells the final congregation. He is not, he adds, about to give them that pleasure.

In the vestry hangs an elderly document listing 30 men born within a mile of Wearhead bridge - 30, mark, Featherstones and Watsons and Pearts - who became Methodist ministers of either calling.

Eight Primitive Methodist clergy - three Elliotts, two Watsons, two Phillipsons - are commemorated on a tablet on the wall; another salutes Emerson Humble, a church founder, and Fanny Peart - "a notable member who kept an open house for Primitive Methodist preachers for more than 50 years".

Whilst in the vestry, the incorrigible columnist also pinches a pre-service chocolate biscuit from a tin marked Temptations. "Have two," says Maxine Raine, the organist. "It's a Methodist do, there's always plenty left."

Opening the proceedings, Mr Hann concedes that in some ways it's a sad occasion - "but it's also an opportunity to thank God for all the service and the preaching of the gospel from this place".

It marks a change, he says, a corner in the road. "This chapter closes and there's sadness in that, but there's a new page to be written tomorrow by you and me.

"There'll still be a Methodist presence in the dale. Folks aren't shifting house, so far as I know."

We sing Thou Shepherd of Israel and Mine, an old Wesley favourite, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory and Lord Thy Word Abideth (and our footsteps guideth). A few noses are blown; it's doubtless just the bug that's going around.

There's reminiscence afterwards of Sunday Schools and strawberry teas, of Young Wives and knife and fork suppers, of anniversaries annually overflowing.

"Once there were lots of workers and we've had an awful lot of pleasure, but recently there've just been the five and for a few years we've been struggling," says Edna Emerson.

"It's very sad but we have to move on," says Marie Peadon. "We wanted this to be a happy service and it has been, there's still plenty of life in the dale. Don't put in that we're all miserable up here, because we're not."

Nellie Dawson, now down dale in Stanhope, had been steward, secretary and treasurer, didn't look for any of the jobs, she says, but got them, anyway.

"I'm not in a very good frame of mind," she admits, "there are so many wonderful memories of this place. You try to egg people on, but we're all getting older, you know."

An hour after the last Amen, a dozen or so are still chatting in the chapel, as if reluctant to say goodbye to a dear old friend.

It's been a good service, a way - as well they might say up there - of going out on a high. It's homeward hard, nonetheless, not to recall the old joke about there being a lot of apathy about, and who cares?

THE North-East branch of the Wesley Historical Society hosts Dr Sue Jackson's public lecture on "Methodism in Gibraltar" today at 2.30pm in Dawson Street Methodist church, Crook. Formed in Gibraltar more than 200 years ago, the Methodist church - Rock of ages, as it were - continues to flourish there. Admission is open to all.