History of the club

Stanley Pool was originally constructed in 1786 as an 8 acre reservoir to supply the canal network. The stream, which was damned to construct the reservoir, also powered three mills, two of which can still be seen today. The nearest mill to the lake is now the residential dwelling at the bottom of the dam wall, the second mill is at the junction of Puddy lane and Stanley Lane it is now used as the site for a stone masons business. The third mill was at the base of the original dam & its site was submerged when the new damn was built and the reservoir extended to 33 acres in 1840. As many members will know only too well, the original dam still exists under Stanley Pool and at times of drought the original valve workings and even the wall itself can become exposed.

Stanley (the name means a clearing in stony ground) was occupied by the estate of the Stanley family, who lived there from at least the late 12th century. The oldest house there is Lower House Farm, of c. 1700 and probably on the site of the medieval manor house. The village grew up in the 19th century in connexion with flint mills. Rows of cottages were built in the 1860s, probably for mill workers, and one row contained a beerhouse called the Travellers Rest, a name still used today for an inn there. Two larger houses, Tudor House opposite the Travellers Rest and Spilsbury House at the west end of the village, were also built in the 1860s. A post office was opened in the earlier 1880s. Several detached and semidetached houses were built in parts of the village between the two World Wars and from the 1960s.

Stanley Head, a house to the east of the pool, was built by 1743. Stanley Head was let as a children's outdoor education centre from the early 1960s and children using the centre still use the Pool for activities such as canoing and sailing today.



Water powered mills in the area.

1. Stanley Mill
As you turn into Puddy Lane, from the road from Stanley to Bagnall, there are a collection of fine buildings opposite the lane, where the sign for a stone-cutting business, Corinthian Stone Ltd., can be seen. This is the site of one of the former mills in the area, Stanley Mill. There was a mill in Stanley in the earlier 16th and in the later 17th century, which probably stood there, on the stream on west side of the village, north of the Bagnall road, where there was a corn mill in 1816. In 1865 that mill was both a corn mill and a flint mill. Stanley mill was rebuilt in 1887 as Hercules mills by Harrison & Son, who used it for grinding potters' materials, notably black manganese, until its closure c. 1970. In 1991 the mill and associated buildings were occupied by small commercial enterprises, including Corinthian Stone Ltd.

2. Flint mill (now submerged under the north end of the Pool)
A flint mill was built upstream from the corn mill, probably in the late 1770s. Powered later by Stanley Pool, it still existed as a flint mill in 1835, but its site was submerged when the reservoir was extended in 1840.

3. Flint mill (now the house across the lane from the dam)
In 1835 there was another mill, worked as a flint, glaze, and colour mill, between the corn mill and the flint mill. Still a flint mill in the late 1870s, it had been turned into a gelatine works by the late 1890s. The works was disused by the early 1920s, and the building was converted into a house.