STEPPING down from the pulpit after 70 years as an accredited Methodist minister is Barnoldswick's Rev James Wright.

Rev Wright - Jim to his many friends - took his final planned service on Sunday at St Andrew's Methodist Church, just across the road from the home in Mosley Street which he shares with his wife of 56 years, Kathleen.

It was an occasion peppered with fond memories of a lifetime in the ministry, and one attended by people from many of the circuits where Rev Wright has spread the word.

Among the congregation was Barnoldswick's Belle Broughton, who had travelled especially from the nursing home where she now lives in Colne. At 102, she remembers Rev Wright - now a mere 86 - when he was just a lad growing up in Barlick.

He was born of farming stock and raised at Calf Hall Farm, where he was no stranger to hard work from an early age. His school days were spent at Rainhall Road Methodist School, just across the road from the old Rainhall Road Methodist Church, where St Andrew's House now stands.

"It was a 700-seater with a grand gallery," remembered Rev Wright, who would later be married at the church.

The teachers at the school were all connected with the church, and it followed that so were the pupils. Even as a young lad, Rev Wright felt a strong calling to the ministry and he preached his first sermon as a nervous 13-year-old at the Mount Pleasant Methodist Church at County Brook, in 1927.

The next three years were spent preaching in local Methodist circuits and studying for accreditation as a local preacher - a goal achieved in 1930. But the body needed sustenance as well as the spirit, and he worked at a variety of occupations to make ends meet.

With the economic depression of the 1930s, work was often hard to find, but Rev Wright was seldom idle. Apart from farm work as a youth, he learned to weave and trained as a wireless operator. Later he trained in electrical engineering and worked for a number of local firms including Harry Broughton's, where he worked on motors, generators and switchboards.

There was night school too, studying for qualifications in accounting and bookkeeping as well as commercial French and English.

But his first love and his true vocation remained the church, and in 1937 he was accepted as a candidate for the full-time ministry.

Even after leaving college in 1940, Rev Wright still had four years' probation to serve, in charge of two churches in the Whalley Range circuit, in Manchester. As if that wasn't a big enough responsibility for a newly qualified young minister, it was wartime, with people much in need of spiritual guidance and comfort. It was, indeed, a baptism of fire.

On completing his probation in 1944, Rev Wright moved to the Otley circuit, living at Menston. It was then that he and Kathleen were married in Barnoldswick, having first met 11 years earlier.

Kathleen was from a well-known local family - her father, Louis Barwick, was the booking clerk at Barnoldswick Railway Station.

In 1949, the couple moved on and his largest congregations were on the Timperley and Altrincham circuit, in Cheshire, where they often numbered 500. He and Kathleen were there from 1964 to 1970.

He retired in 1978 and the couple went to live in a minister's bungalow at Grassington. After two years, they moved back to Barnoldswick, buying the house in Mosley Street that Kathleen's family had rented for over 50 years.

Even though retired, Rev Wright was much in demand as a "supernumerary minister", taking services whenever and wherever he was required in many local - and some not-so-local - circuits.

Twenty-two years on, he decided it was time to call it a day.

"I chose this year because it is just 60 years since I went into the full-time ministry and 70 years since I became an accredited preacher. I thought they were nice round numbers," said Rev Wright.

So Sunday saw his last planned service - he stresses "planned" as he might still be called on in emergencies - and there was a packed church at St Andrew's.

When the congregation was asked if anyone had come far for the service, several held up their hands. One man said Rev Wright had officiated at his wedding 48 years earlier.

After the service, there was an opportunity to chat with many members of the congregation who had travelled to the special service.

Looking back on his 70-plus years in the pulpit, Rev Wright said: "I wouldn't have missed any of it. All the circuits were different and had their own character, from small country places to the 500-strong congregations at Timperley"

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