Misterton, Notts (now South Yorkshire)

John Wesley visited Misterton frequently as it was on one of the main roads to Epworth; indeed, he told a story of a woman who had a premonition of drowning on the way there but travelled anyway – and her premonition came to pass. Wesley preached at least eight times in the village but faced opposition from the Baptist minister in 1757 – ‘all behaved with deep seriousness except a Baptist preacher,’ he noted. It certainly had a society from an early date and in 1767 George Whitefield was called out by Wesley to become a preacher himself. However when Wesley came in 1790 he found the work there ‘exceedingly decayed’ though the ‘house’ was too small for his congregation and so he preached beneath a tree.
The importance of Misterton to the Methodists is shown in the size of its rebuilt chapel of 1878, which could seat 300 persons and was on the site of an earlier building. This seems to have been a response to the Primitive Methodists, who had opened a new one months earlier.
Important people who have lived at Misterton include the missionary Joseph Tindall who lived here as a child and thought it ‘a place of sin’.