This County Durham coaching inn is where Charles Dickens is believed to have stayed while researching Nicholas Nickleby - and where an artist later paid off his bar bill by painting one of the most remarkable pub murals in England across the walls of the bar.
The Morritt is the kind of hotel that makes you feel as though you have found something.
It sits on the old road at Greta Bridge, three miles south-east of Barnard Castle, in a valley where the River Greta slips through wooded gorges before meeting the Tees, and it has been receiving travellers here since the late 17th century.
Today it has two AA Rosettes for food, a spa built inside a vintage garage, individually designed bedrooms and a bar that contains one of the most entertaining pieces of art in any pub in the North East.
But what people love about the Morritt is harder to reduce to a list of amenities. It is more to do with the accumulated weight of everything that has happened here.
Where the old road used to stop
Before the railways arrived in the 1850s, Greta Bridge was the second overnight stop for coaches travelling the London to Carlisle route.
There were three inns at the crossing — The George, the New Inn, and the building that would become the Morritt Arms — and a considerable flow of travellers passed through each week, stopping to rest horses and eat and sleep before pressing on north.
The present Morritt dates from the late 17th century, when there was a farm on the site, and some of the original farm outbuildings survive in the surrounding buildings today.
The A66 bypassed Greta Bridge in 1976, which is as much a part of the Morritt's story as anything else.
The traffic still passes nearby, but the old road beside the hotel is quiet, and the coaching inn rhythm — arrival, fire, food, rest — has never really left the place.
Earlier this year it was put up for sale, and guests tend to describe the same thing: they arrived meaning to stay a night and found it difficult to leave.
The Dickens connection
In February 1838–39, Charles Dickens made a journey north to investigate the cheap boarding schools of Yorkshire, researching what would become Nicholas Nickleby .
He stopped at Greta Bridge and is believed to have stayed at one of the inns, possibly the Morritt, which now leans into that association.
In the novel, Greta Bridge becomes the rendezvous between Nicholas and the monstrous schoolmaster Wackford Squeers, thought to be based on William Shaw of Dotheboys Hall at Bowes, three miles away.
The hotel's Dickens Bar carries that connection.
It is a classic country bar with leather seating, a log fire and a long counter, and it is where most people end up after dinner regardless of what they had planned.
What stops them when they walk in is the mural.
The painting that settled a bar bill
In the winter of 1946, the artist John Gilroy arrived at the Morritt to paint a portrait of the hotel's owner, Major Morritt.
Snow came down and blocked the roads, and Gilroy was marooned for days, running up a substantial bar bill in the process.
When the time came to settle it, he offered to paint a mural instead, decorating an entire wall of the bar with a Dickensian party scene.
Gilroy was one of Britain's best-known commercial artists, responsible for the Guinness advertising campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s, and he filled the bar wall with jolly caricatures from the Dickensian era.
The faces he used, however, were the bar's regulars and the hotel's staff, creating a piece that is both literary homage and local snapshot. The mural was fully restored in 2022, bringing back its original colour and detail after decades of cigarette smoke and pipework damage.
"You see people having fun," one of the restoration team told the BBC, describing "a pub environment but a very jolly one" that still reflects the bar's atmosphere today.
The valley that made artists famous
The Morritt's position in the Greta valley puts it at the centre of one of the most painted landscapes in British art history.
John Sell Cotman arrived at nearby Rokeby Hall in the summer of 1805 and spent weeks working the riverbanks and gorges, producing the watercolour now known simply as Greta Bridge — considered among the finest British watercolours and held in the British Museum collection.
Cotman later stayed at the Morritt Arms itself, continuing to paint the area and producing a series of views of the bridge and woods.
J.M.W. Turner followed in the wake of Sir Walter Scott’s poem Rokeby , published in 1813 and dedicated to John Morritt of Rokeby Park, whose family name the hotel now bears.
Scott’s poem helped put Teesdale on the tourist map, and Turner was among the artists who arrived to capture the Meeting of the Waters where the Greta joins the Tees — a beauty spot still walked to from the hotel today.
The food, the rooms and the spa
Gilroy’s Restaurant, named after the artist who paid his bar tab in paint, holds two AA Rosettes and serves a seasonal menu based on local produce.
Its menus change with the seasons, offering modern dishes that sit alongside classics in an oak-panelled dining room.
Sunday lunch is a Morritt institution, served from noon to 4pm, and traditional afternoon tea — tiered stand, scones, cakes — is available daily with advance booking.
The Dickens Bar is the more relaxed option, serving pub classics, sandwiches and lighter dishes throughout the day and evening, and is open to non-residents.
In fine weather, food and drinks are served in the tiered gardens behind the hotel, which reviewers describe as "very pretty" and "a lovely area" to sit out with a drink.
Bedrooms are individually designed, ranging from cosy courtyard rooms with exposed beams to larger rooms with ornate four-poster beds and freestanding baths.
Reviewers mention "lovely bathrooms, big fluffy towels and luxury English toiletries" and describe rooms as "large and comfortable" even if some are "a little tired in places."
The Garage Spa - converted from the hotel’s old garage buildings - offers hot and cold plunge pools, an outdoor hot tub, a sauna in a shepherd’s hut and a menu of treatments themed around motoring.
The walks from the door
The Teesdale Way long-distance footpath passes close to the hotel, and walks from the car park take in some of County Durham’s most rewarding river scenery.
The Meeting of the Waters, where the Greta joins the Tees near Rokeby Hall, is around 20 minutes on foot and was praised in the 19th century as one of England’s finest natural scenes.
A three-mile circular walk from the Morritt takes in Rokeby Park, the Greta gorges and the bridges made famous by Cotman’s paintings.
Barnard Castle, with its castle ruins, independent shops and the Bowes Museum, is about a ten-minute drive, making the Morritt a practical base for exploring Teesdale as well as a destination in its own right.
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How to get there
The Morritt Hotel and Garage Spa is at Greta Bridge, Barnard Castle, County Durham, DL12 9SE, directly off the A66 between Scotch Corner and Penrith.
It is a natural stopping point for anyone travelling between Yorkshire and the Lake District or between the North East and the west, with free on-site parking for guests.
The hotel can be contacted on 01833 627232, and online booking is available via its website.
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