Osmotherley North Yorkshire

John Wesley's Curious Pulpit

OSMOTHERLEY. It is a surprisingly big village to find high up in a cleft of the Hambleton Ridge, with the Cleveland Hills rising grandly in the east, and the Cod Beck, fresh from Osmotherley Moor, flowing in the valley. On the steep moorside is the Chequers Inn, 800 feet above the sea, where a turf fire is said to have been burning more than 200 years. Along the green-bordered road are many stone houses, and by the old village cross is a stone table on five pillars which was probably used as a market stall, and served John Wesley for a pulpit. There is a story that a Roman Catholic priest invited him to this out-of-the way spot, and we know that soon afterwards one of the first Methodist chapels in the land was built here. A simple place with 1754 over the doorway, we come to it through a cobbled alley by an obelisk to the men who fell in the Great War.

From Arthur Mee's The Kings England 1941

The Queen Catherine Hotel Osmotherley