AN old Methodist chapel has been put up for sale, with a price tag of £500,000.

The grade II-listed building on Coltsgate Hill in Ripon is currently owned by the local Knoll Charitable Trust, and the site was home to an earlier chapel where Methodist movement founder John Wesley preached in 1780.

The present two-storey building cost £2,000 to construct and was opened in October 1861 but services came to an end in 1963 when the chapel was merged with nearby Allhallowgate Methodist Church.

Since then the chapel has been put to a variety of uses, including as the site of Ripon’s first supermarket, U-Save, in the 1960s. It is currently part-used as offices by an accountancy firm.

Trust chair Barrie Price said: “With the upkeep of the building becoming more and more of a burden we are hoping that a prospective buyer will be able to regenerate the old chapel to create something that will be a really positive addition for the city.”

Toby Cockcroft of Croft Residential in York said: “The old chapel is a gem of a building that could become something really special in the hands of a creative developer.”