TOGETHER like the proverbial London buses, the column for the third successive week has been helping mark a 125th anniversary: first Chilton Moor, then Wolviston, now the Anglican church of St James the Great, in Darlington.

Whatever the other reasons for which the year 1876 might be remembered, they clearly built a fair few churches.

The anniversary of the consecration is not until Friday, August 31, when solemn Mass will be celebrated by the Bishop of Fulham - not to be confused with Mr Mohamed-al-Fayed, he's the Archdeacon. Since we shall be on holiday, however, it was necessary to pay an early visit.

"An ordinary Sunday," said Fr Ian Grieves, parish priest for the past 12 years, but there is nothing at all ordinary about the church on Albert Hill.

St James the Great has become for the column a sort of annual injection of Anglo-Catholicism, a fix of incense and absolute values, a spirit lifting and immaculately choreographed occasion, on which everything is proper and pristine and perfectly in its place.

Even the congregation are becoming familiar. "How's them bairns of yours?" they said, and "I see the Arsenal's going to have a bad season again."

When Fr Grieves became parish priest in 1989, the average weekly attendance was around 20; now it's six or seven times as many, from all over Darlington and beyond. Last Sunday, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, 171 took communion.

Outwardly, the church is nowt nor summat - "bleak and austere" the pocket guide candidly admits. Inside it is a glorious revelation, and the old place has never looked more splendid.

To mark the anniversary, they have restored the stained glass and relined the drains, painted the railings and renovated the reredos. Five bishops will have joined the celebration before the year ends, 16 charities and good causes will have been helped.

"Ordinary" Sunday, Mass was celebrated by the Rt Rev John Gaisford, the former "flying" Bishop of Beverley. Now landed in retirement in Manchester, he still delights in returning to Darlington - "like a second home," he says.

Outstanding, even among high churches - a spire, some would say; a sore thumb, others - St James's and like-minded congregations found themselves even more greatly at the Church of England's extremities following the decision in November 1992 to allow - "to purport to allow," says the Anglo-Catholics - the ordination of women priests.

Unchanging and proudly uncompromising, they accept "alternative episcopal oversight" beneath an umbrella organisation called Forward in Faith - known principally for its opposition to women's ordination. Like all English churches, St James's attracts more women than men.

Sunday also marked the baptism of the infant John Watson and the dedication of both a new processional cross - designed by Canon David Hinge, formerly of Etherley, made in iroko wood by Arthur Barnaby - and an "incumbents' board", listing St James's parish priests.

The diminutive Fr Arthur Cross, known as The Mighty Atom, was Vicar from 1950-59 and again from 1963-68; Fr Grieves, formerly a curate at St Mark's, up the road, is as well loved as any of them. The organ was thunderous, the choir coruscating, the hymns exulted and the responses acclaimed. Bishop Gaisford, in exuberant form, recalled that the "mean spirited" Church of England General Synod had refused even to acknowledge The Assumption of Our Lady.

"They do these things in the tea break, are given a list, say their ayes and that's it," he insisted.

It was also, said the bishop, a rare privilege to baptize someone else called John. "In my day, 60-odd years ago, John wasn't a name, it was a category."

The younger John regarded the proceedings with commendable equanimity.

"Isn't he gorgeous?" said some. "Isn't he canny?" said others. There wasn't a golden curl between any of them.

The service began at 10am, lasted an hour and 40 minutes, was followed by what St James the Great folk call the parish breakfast - this time with champagne, to wet the baby's head - and which others might suppose rather collides with Sunday dinner.

With high church ritual as with champagne, of course, it may rightly be considered possible to have too much of a good thing. Next year, notwithstanding, we shall happily be back for more.

l The solemn Mass to celebrate the church's 125th anniversary is at 7.30pm on Friday, August 31. A jubilee dinner will be held on Friday, October 26, in Auckland Castle. Mass at St James the Great is usually at 6.45pm daily and 10am on Sunday. Fr Ian Grieves is on (01325) 465980.

Published: Saturday, August 18, 2001