AN 18-year-old churchwarden in a parish with no vicar and an average Sunday congregation of just eight is vowing to fight to keep the church doors open.

“I believe the chances of this church surviving are strong,” says Stephen Williams. “It’s a challenge, but I want to try to do things differently.”

St Peter’s is a 135-year-old, Grade II-listed building barely 200 yards behind Bishop Auckland main street, out of sight and clearly out of mind.

Hemmed in by housing, it has no trees, no grass and no churchyard.

It seats about 500.

The faithful eight include Stephen’s parents and 87-year-old Billy Roxborough, a chorister for 55 years. “It used to be packed out morning and evening,” says Billy.

“It’s very sad what’s happened in recent years.”

The At Your Service column visited in February 2004, St Peter’s already on its knees. The usual congregation of nine included the vicar’s wife and daughter.

The parish magazine revealed that in the previous month there’d been no weddings, baptisms or funerals and that the Christmastide retiring collections had amounted to just £18.

The Reverend Peter Lee, then the vicar, had also spoken of a challenge – “in the understated way,” said the AYS column, “that Sir Edmund Hilary might have supposed the summit of Everest to be rather a tall order”.

Stephen, the minimum age legally to be a churchwarden, says he wishes he could report that the attendance graph had gone upwards.

He’s just gained A-levels, plans a gap year and then to study disaster management at university.

Disaster management? “I know,”

he says. “It does sound a bit appropriate, doesn’t it?”

ST PETER’S had problems from the start, the Victorian parish so short of funds that the Bishop of Durham had personally to provide half the £7,000 building costs.

The future Stan Laurel was baptised there in 1891; the composer Edward Elgar first performed The Music Makers there in 1910.

A 1923 survey put the parish population at about 5,000, including those in the Auckland Union Workhouse.

Now it’s believed to be fewer than 3,000, including out-of-work houses, too.

Before the war the church even had two satellite Sunday Schools, in Stranton Street and Peel Street. Now there are eight people, no children.

“I can name you the other seven if you want,” says Stephen.

The ironic thing is that the nearby Elim Pentecostal church – altogether less traditional than the Church of England – now meets in St Peter’s, after the regular 10.30am Sunday service, because it has outgrown its own premises.

“They do seem to have a lot of junior groups. They’re doing very well,” says the Ven Nick Barker, archdeacon of Auckland – an area embracing the southern part of the diocese of Durham. He’s never known a churchwarden to be as young as 18, he says.

Mr Lee retired last year. The diocese has said that there’ll be no replacement incumbent for at least five years. A rota of mainly retired priests leads Sunday services.

Stephen admits that a church without a priest is “somewhat” discouraging – “it would be good to have a figurehead” – but insists that there’s hope.

Churchwardens are usually associated with pipes, sometimes with pomposity. Stephen’s trying to change the image. “We’ve a website, we’re on Facebook and we’re on Twitter.

“I do all the usual things that 18- year-olds do, but the Church Council and I want to try to get this church engaging with the community more.

It’s just something I wanted to have a go at.”

WE’RE gathered for a harvest flower festival preview evening. Better yet, harvest festival with Gregory’s pies. The church looks really good, though clearly in need of some attention. A martial arts club is meeting in the hall out the back.

There are displays by the Edge Hill allotment gardeners, something made with gingerbread men that’s seriously tempting to devour, an “Autumn harvest” display laid out on pages from last week’s Northern Echo. You’d never get that with a blooming website.

Another display has been mounted by Bishop Auckland Football Club, arranged by club treasurer Pauline Duffy. It includes her husband Tony’s boots. Tony’s the club secretary. “She even cleaned them,”

he says.

There’s also a scarecrow in the pulpit.

Any resemblance to the Archdeacon of Auckland is said wholly to be coincidental.

The archdeacon talks of the possibility of uniting St Peter’s with the other Bishop Auckland parishes of St Andrew and St Anne in a new benefice but can’t say if he thinks St Peter’s itself will survive. He also admits that he’s been talking to the Pentecostals.

The Bishop of Jarrow has been down, too, and didn’t like to build up too many hopes, either.

Stephen talks in his opening remarks about the importance of community.

“You can’t imagine how generous the local shops have been,” he adds.

Archdeacon Barker says that it’s lovely to see such enthusiasm – “these things don’t just take place”

– talks briefly about miracles.

They can happen, it’s said. “We’ve got this far,” says Stephen. “We’ll get there.”