ALL the best houses have ladies who come in and do the cleaning - and the house of the Lord is apparently no exception.

Salisbury Cathedral has its own team of self-proclaimed holy dusters who, for the last 21 years, have turned up religiously every day except Sundays to give the choir stalls the once over.

There's a lot of woodwork there, some of it ornately carved and the rest worn smooth by bottoms gone-by, but it's kept dust-free and lightly polished year in, year out.

This voluntary service is so valued that Salisbury dean the Very Reverend June Osborne has happily invited the holy dusters to the Deanery on February 3, to celebrate their 21st birthday as a team.

Not many of its members, most would concede, have seen 21 recently.

The majority are ladies in retirement, but chief holy duster Dordie Daniels points out that many have been voluntarily turning up once a fortnight for a great many years and were a lot younger when they first wielded their feather dusters in the service of the Lord.

She is searching for her tickling stick as I drop in on Friday morning for a chat.

"I think you left it on the bishop's throne," offers colleague Margaret Thomas, a stripling of 60.

Retired Relate councillor Dordie - a spry and immaculately turned out 70-year-old - is not averse to clambering onto the bishop's throne to see off the cobwebs on high.

She, Margaret and former Diocesan social services worker Betty Ward (75) have been working together for more than a decade.

Both Margaret's children were head choristers in their time and would come in and help out in the summer holidays.

The holy dusters (there are around 50 of them) work on a rota, generally in teams of four, so the workload is spread and does not represent too onerous a task.

Dordie (it's a corruption of Doreen) explains: "I was on the cathedral forum at the time when Sydney Evans was bishop.

"I suggested that this area looked very neglected and he asked me what I was going to do about it, so I was rather hoist with my own petard.

"I thought I'd get more volunteers if it was only once a fortnight.

"It's not hard work - we just do the dusting and a tiny bit of polishing, but it does look enormously better since we've been doing it.

"I've had a letter from another cathedral who want to come and meet us for specialist advice, but I shall have to tell them we just dust and polish."

No special equipment then?

"We use our thumbnails to scrape off the candle wax - lots gets dropped over Christmas," says Dordie.

This morning, the organ is being played and the cathedral is almost deserted except for a man and his young daughter who stop to chat as they tour the building.

"Visitors often ask questions and it's fun to talk to people," says Dordie.

The cathedral, they all agree, is a magnificent place to work.

"We're just part of a huge group of volunteers who are all important and love to come in and do their bit," says Dordie.

"I think our homes are reasonably well looked after, but lots of husbands say we do more dusting here than at home."