CHRISTMAS is a busy time for a parish priest, especially for a relative newcomer.

Father Clive Hillman took up his post as parish priest of St Clement’s Church in Leigh in January.

Having previously managed three parishes across five Welsh villages, Father Clive’s new workload is somewhat lighter than it was, though like every other priest he is busy with the parish’s Christmas celebrations.

In recent days, he has seen all the infant schools in the parish’s Nativity plays, administered Holy Communion to a man in hospital, put up the church Christmas tree during the Knit and Natter group meeting and hosted a carol service, all on top of saying Mass every day.

But he has a willing band of helpers to make sure everything gets done.

He said: “I don’t do the half of it.

The lay people in the church are the ones who do the majority of our work, and we couldn’t do without them. It’s a very busy church that’s very active in the community and there’s not a point it stops.”

The 43-year-old grew up in the small North Wales village of Betws- Y-Coed and speaks Welsh, but spent much of his childhood in Leigh, where generations of his family lived. He said: “The Broadway used to be very much traditional shops and there was only one place to eat, the Popular, but it’s definitely gone ‘coffee culture’ since then.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Father Clive’s family on his mother’s side once had a farm close to what is now Southend Hospital and his great-grandfather commuted from Leigh to Tate and Lyle in London from the 1860s following the arrival of the railway.

His family settled in Wales before he was born, but as a teenager he would spend a week with his grandmother in Leigh each summer.

He said: “In some ways I’ve come home but I was never brought up here. Leigh was somewhere I knew as a place to lose my welly in the mud and be fed cockles.

“I didn’t request to become the parish priest in Leigh but it came up, conversations were had, and it just seemed worth applying. In my last job I reopened a village church and the question was whether I stayed on and took it to the next step. But I was interested to have a look at St Clement’s because it’s a family church and generations of my own family worshipped there.

“My own parents were even married there.

“It’s a bit weird, but it’s fun.

There’s always a danger with going back to where you’ve been before, but the place is made by people, not the buildings, and while the familiarity of the place is comfortable, all the people here have been new to me. Our youngest member is nine days old and our oldest is 101 years old – it’s a great mix of people.”