THOUGH his service to the Church of England has been long and distinguished, though he is affectionately remembered in many parts of what for ease we term the North-East of England, the Rev Harry Lee had hoped that the golden jubilee of his ordination would be a quiet affair.

Not a word appeared in the parish magazine, not so much as a whisper in last Sunday's pew sheet.

Then Harry, the most delightful of men, was rumbled. An email arrived here from his cousin in Essex, himself in training for holy orders. The ordination as deacon - the irrevocable crossing of the Rubicon, as Harry himself calls it - had been on September 25, 1955, at the hands of Dr Michael Ramsey, the beloved Bishop of Durham.

That same weekend, the £2.5m Lambton coking plant was officially opened near Houghton-le-Spring, 42 Spennymoor folk were taken to hospital with food poisoning on a day trip to Blackpool, Len Shackleton scored twice in Sunderland's 3-1 over Arsenal and England cricketer Frank Tyson, 25, received his honours degree at Durham University.

Harry - golden inarguably, oldie on hold - at once unmasked the culprit. "My wretched cousin," he said with the utmost affability, and the younger man may in any case be exonerated on the grounds that he was originally a Shildon lad, the geographical equivalent of a royal pardon.

Thus it was that some time before 8am last Sunday, we found ourselves panting up Church Bank in Shotley Bridge - "We call it the undertakers' friend," said Harry in greeting - to the glorious church of St Cuthbert's.

It was Holy Communion from the Book of Communion Prayer, just eight regulars in attendance. The service, if not the celebrant, would be unsung.

Exactly 50 years previously, the splendour of the cathedral had been followed by the harsher realities of life as a wet eared curate in the dockland parish of St Ignatius, Sunderland.

He wasn't married. "It was absolutely fascinating, like something out of a Dickens novel, but not perhaps the sort of parish you'd want to take a young bride to," he said.

Born in Billingham, one of five Stockton Grammar School contemporaries all to be ordained, he served subsequently at Nevilles Cross, at Medomsley, near Consett, as Vicar of Holy Trinity in Darlington and chaplain to the Memorial Hospital and at Brompton, Northallerton. By way of further embarrassment for the poor chap, the Echo's files contain a photograph from Darlington days of a young lady wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "We love the Vicar." Doubtless it was so.

"If I have a regret," he said after the service, "it's that I didn't stay longer in one place."

He retired in 1991, he and his wife Averil - the last head of Aldbrough St John village school, near Richmond - now happily settled in Shotley Bridge, on County Durham's scenic north-west frontier with Northumberland.

Shotley is perhaps best known for sword making, the industry's demise offering frequent opportunity to quote the verse from Isaiah about beating swords into ploughshares.

It was also a spa town, visited in 1838 by Charles Dickens and said in Paul Heatherington's admirable little history to have rivalled Cheltenham and Harrogate. For 100 years there was a paper mill, employing 300 in 1894, and in the 20th century a highly regarded general hospital which between 1926-39 had been the Shotley Bridge Colony for Mental Defectives.

Now the village was barely stirring, the Crown and Crossed Swords still sleeping, the convenience store alone living up to its name, even at 7.30am.

Designed by the celebrated John Dobson, the church was consecrated in 1850, its spire 130 feet aloft. The service begins on the eighth stroke. "This is awful," says Harry mischievously, another reference to his "enthusiastic" cousin and to the ninth member of the congregation.

His sermon, short and splendoured, embraces those 50 years, nonetheless. One of the day's readings has included the familiar verse from Matthew: "By what authority doest thou these things, and who gaveth thee this authority?"

It is a text, he tells us, which haunts all clergymen ("and I suppose I should say clergywomen".)

The sermon is a series of short stories, apparently the Lee way, illustrating the fragility of a priest's reputation. "I don't believe you can scold people into virtue," he says afterwards. "It doesn't work."

We hear of the long gone curate of St Ignatius best remembered because he didn't clean his shoes - "I would advise theological colleges to forget the theology and sociology; tell them to always remember to clean their shoes" - and of the 16th century parson at Embleton, near Sedgefield, admonished for "performing divine service imperfectly".

Harry tells also of Canon Kyle, Vicar of Carlton-in-Cleveland and Faceby from 1894-1943, who was also a farmer. His tup was in contention with one other for best in show, much debate among the judges before the vicar's finally sorted sheep from goats.

The canon asked what swung it. "Yours," said the chief judge, "had mair character." Character, says Harry, might be a clue to authority.

Neil Bellerby, one of the churchwardens, makes a small and unexpected presentation at the end. "He's enormously well thought of, a real character, a wonderful man. I keep telling him he should write a book."

We adjourn for coffee and bramble muffins, to talk about the past and to ponder the future. He acknowledges that the job has changed. "The old parish priest had to stick up for his parish. He was its defender. Now it's all very centralised.

"They like clergy to be controlled from the diocese and to keep parishes in order, especially financially. The young priest has a very tough job."

Though statistics glower, he remains optimistic. "I don't get the impression that the general public is hostile, they're pretty decent on the whole. It's just this growing secularisation.

"Somebody once said that history was a cordial for drooping spirits. I think that if you look at the history of the Church, you'll find we've been here before. I live in faith and hope.

"The Church of England is a great institution. I love it and I hate it but, whatever it might do, I'm not going to turn my back on it now."