Hymn of praise to a long-serving church stalwart

A lifetime's commitment by John Fall has been acknowledged by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace. Chris Berry reports.

Practical joker John Fall thought the joke was on him when he was told that he was a finalist in the "Unsung Hero of the Rural Church" award.

"I said, 'you've got the wrong person, I was never in the Army!' I thought I was being had, because I've played a few tricks on others in the past."

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But the call which retired farmer John had received was no joke. It was recognition for the 45 years service he has put in as church warden

at St Michael's Church in Kirklington in North Yorkshire.

"I could have dropped to the floor when the Archbishop of Canterbury announced my name. I think it's for Kirklington really. We have a good team here and Rosemary, my wife, does far more than I do." John's skill as a businessman has stood him in good stead right from school days. "I used to nip over the school wall at Richmond School where I boarded. Mrs Benson made some lovely sausage rolls for tuppence each. I used to buy them and nip back over to school and sell them for sixpence each. I could always go home from school at the end of each term with more money than I went with."

John followed in his family's footsteps and became a farmer, originally learning his trade away from the village before returning to run his own farm.

"My parents both died when I was young. I am the sixth of seven children and we all had to make our own way. I went to Mr Peacock's farm in Kirkby Fleetham on the Courage Estate, owned by the brewers. I was always interested in trying to do anything that would make money."

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He later turned that skill to the church's finances but not before he had honed it through a variety of money-making schemes in his youth. "When I was learning about farming with Mr Peacock, he and his cousin guided me. I kept ferrets and used to go rabbiting on a Saturday afternoon. Mr Peacock's cousin said I'd be far better off with two hens in the hut where I kept the ferrets. So I kept hens and two became 20. We then went in a bigger way. I would buy the hens in at 10 shillings, they would lay their heads off for six weeks, then I would sell all the hens for Easter at 25 shillings. So I made a capital gain on the hens as well as earning from the eggs. My next question was, could I have a pig? He let me have one and I eventually ended up with 200 pigs on the farm."

John's talent won him admirers, notably from the Courage Estate. "I was told I could have the next farm where there wasn't an automatic tenant. There's a saying that you should never wait for 'dead man's boots' but I waited 13 years. Eventually I got my chance here, back in Kirklington, tenanting 150 acres. That's how my job as church warden came about – through Mr Oswald Potter, my cousin. He was the church warden before me. He said, 'I've been church warden here for 44 years and I've never been able to get rid of the job!'"

John's farm thrived and he married Rosemary. He did particularly well out of potatoes and cereals and was one of the first in the area to grow oil seed rape. At one time his farming operation spanned 2,300 acres. Today one of his sons runs 1,000 acres from nearby Pickhill.

John has now beaten his cousin's record of church wardenship, having completed 45 years service in the role. "Oswald Potter gave me one bit of advice when I took on the job. He said 'keep parsons and money far apart'. It was really good advice. Vicars don't want to have to be raising money and neither should treasurers. It should be other people.

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"The first thing I had to do was sort out the organ. It was going wonky. We needed to spend 3,000 on it. This was about 1963-64 so it was a lot of money then. To put it into perspective, land was 100/acre at the time. I put thought to it and decided that I wouldn't even start raising money unless I knew I could get there. I thought of the people I was going to get the money from and each said they would back me. One lady got her cheque book out there and then, but I told her not to write it until I knew I had the lot. She said 'I might be dead by then, here you are'."

New toilet facilities inside the church and new church bells are two of the many other projects John has made sure have been funded over the years. But he's not just a finance man. He spends a lot of time tidying the church yard and making sure the building is in good order. He's even been training up his protg – Derrick Potter. "Derrick always refers to me as the senior church warden, with him as my junior. Well he is only 70 to my nearly 80."

Congregation numbers are falling around the country and village communities are fragmenting as commuters move in. Will there come a time when there aren't people around like John to keep the church afloat?

"We don't have services every Sunday and our morning services sometimes get up to 30-40. But we've only 100 houses in the village. We have an ageing congregation, but I wouldn't say it's dwindling, it's averaging slightly more than last year.

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"We run what are called 'Food For Thought' evenings where the whole community comes. We eat together and there's a guest speaker. And every two years we have a really special Open Gardens when 20 gardens are on show in the last weekend in June.

"Kirklington is now a dormitory village. People pay a good price for their homes here. Usually that means the wife has to go out and get a job, everyone has two cars and a mortgage. One partner goes to Harrogate, the other to Northallerton. It is difficult to get people who are new to the parish to come into the church.

"We had a school of 60 children, but when it went down to 12 it closed. We had four shops when we came here. All we have now is a pub and a post office that opens a few hours a week.

"The Wandesford family who had the estate here had the motto, Tout pour l'eglise – 'All for the Church'. All of the farmers used to go to church. The landlord wanted it. The farmers' sons then wanted to create a good image with the landlord and that had an influence on attendance.

"Today we only have one farm worker left in the village."

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