While the Methodist chapel at Wind Mill may have its problems, it still knows how to celebrate harvest in style, as demonstrated last Sunday.

ON the premise that what goes around comes around, as folk rather strangely now suppose, we have been back to the glorious little Methodist chapel at Wind Mill.

The last visit was at Pentecost - mighty rushing Wind Mill - in May 1994. It was only the third At Your Service column.

Last Sunday was harvest festival, a sumptuously traditional occasion at which the congregation of friends and former inhabitants almost doubled the present population of the village, offering new meaning to harvest home.

Wind Mill is a speck of a place, as near to Toft Hill in west Durham as probably to anywhere on Earth. There are 12 houses, 30 people and since 1869, a doughty little chapel to help minister to their needs.

It's the old fashioned sort of chapel where mint imperials are passed surreptitiously before the sermon - and where the column, as always, is in the row behind.

Joyce Simpson, born in Wind Mill, admits that the church's survival is improbable. "Chapels are shutting up all over, but we'll keep going as long as we possibly can.

"I always feel that if you turn a chapel into a house, it's a sign that it's failed. We're in the middle of nowhere, but people still pass. It's witness, isn't it?"

Like the theatre of much the same name, it is the chapel which never closes.

Until the 1860s, the hamlet was called Pit Green, and with no greater imagination. An upper room in the long gone windmill offered a meeting place for the early Primitive Methodists.

Stone for the chapel was quarried by volunteers, erection at little greater cost, Hodgsons, Meins and Busseys all much involved.

"It's our heritage," says Hazel Gaskill. "My great grandfather started to build it, my grandfather carried it on. There were seven of us sisters and six got married here as well." (Last time we'd seen Hazel was at Sunday service in Darlington Memorial Hospital, June 2000. She was in for a new hip, we with the dreaded DVTs. "It's wonderful," she says of the joint exercise, "you completely forget that it's there.")

Last time we were at Wind Mill the average congregation was nine. Since Toft Hill Chapel closed, it's sometimes twice as many, though none of them still eligible for the youth club.

Between them, they have to find around £25,000 for a new roof, disabled toilet and redecoration. They celebrate Christmas, rejoice at Easter but, as usual, it is the harvest which offers a major growth area - services at 2pm and 6pm, overflowing concert and auction the following evening.

"I always say that if we have a good harvest we can get through another year," says Hazel.

Greta Tallentire, 83 next week, recalls that her grandmother kept the shop in Wind Mill, each week travelling by horse and trap to Bishop Auckland to stock up on supplies.

"Like Joyce and Hazel, there's always someone to keep the chapel going. I believe there always will be," she says.

The building is lavishly bedecked, more fruitful and more floral than anything in memory. The front overflows with all good things around us and every window sill is similarly arrayed. One of the window sills also has a jar for the roof appeal ("people are always giving me bits and pieces," says Joyce) and a letter from the Queen acknowledging the chapel's centenary.

"I have laid your letter before Her Majesty..."

Alan Coates, the visiting minister - in charge of several Darlington churches - remembers coming to Wind Mill when singing with the celebrated Cockfield Male Voice Choir.

"It was so crowded that you have to sit among the cakes," he says, adding mischievously that at Wind Mill, among the cakes wasn't a bad place to sit.

Since last he was up there, someone's built a new barn. "I didn't know you had an extension," Alan tells his congregation. Forty two are present, almost all over 65. It is not the time to worry about demographics.

A former BT engineer, the minister's a Cockfield lad, is kept in touch with Wind Mill by his mam, tells them how good it is to be back amid a proper harvest festival.

"It's so close to home I can feel the draught from Cockfield Fell from here," he says. "Eeeh, the daft clown," says the old lady in front, and with undisguised affection.

His sermon also contains the only known harvest festival joke, so splendid that we reproduce it elsewhere. The first five minutes aren't so much an address as an exchange of gossip.

"Me mam keeps me in touch," he says.

The hymns are traditional, the atmosphere warm, the north wind whistling around the roof as if determined to underline the contrast.

As if in silent encore, or waiting for the second house, no one leaves when proceedings end at precisely 3pm.

"It's good that people still enjoy coming to this little chapel," says Joyce. A rich harvest, indeed.

* The next major fund raising event is a concert in church by the Brancepeth and Aycliffe brass band at 7.30pm on Wednesday, December 10. Details from Joyce on (01388) 718597. Usual Sunday service is at 10.45am.