Crossland Place, Leen Side

Crossland Place, Leen Side

In a certain cottage somewhere off Crossland-place, John Wesley preached and inaugurated the great work of the Methodists in Nottingham.

So great a number of people desired to hear the great evangelist that a hole was knocked through the ceiling of the ground floor so that auditors might crowd into the upper room and still hear Mr. Wesley speaking on the ground floor. This humble cottage sufficed for the infant society, but in a few years the membership had so much increased that Zion Chapel, at the corner of Fletcher-gate and Byard-lane, was built for its accommodation.

Although almost numberless poems have been addressed to the amenities of Nottingham one is at a loss where to look for these beauties nowadays, and it would be a long time before anybody in search of the picturesque bethought himself of Leen Side.

Crossland Place, Leen Side

Nevertheless, some of the finest views in Nottingham are to be obtained from that thoroughfare, for the wonderful setting of St. Mary’s Church upon its cliff is, in certain limits, almost comparable to the view of St. Cuthbert’s Cathedral from Durham Station.

But Crossland-place was part of the Marsh slum area, and, with it, has entirely disappeared to give place to the new Cliff-road housing estate built by the Corporation.