Brook, woodland and iron
Slitting Mill
A small Cannock Chase-edge village where a millpond, a waterfall and Rising Brook still explain an industrial name.
- Best for
- Waterside industrial history and woodland walks
- Give it
- A half day, or longer with a nearby nature stop
- Don't miss
- The sluice gates and waterfall at Horns Pool
The Fox verdict
A mill village best read beside the brook
Slitting Mill is a compact base for following Rising Brook from early ironworking sites towards the wooded edge of Cannock Chase.
Come for the Cannock Chase Heritage Trail, the millpond landscape at Horns Pool and a meal at The Horns Inn. The village's strongest visit links those stops into one industrial story, while Cannock Chase Forest, the Trent and Mersey Canal and The Wolseley Centre broaden a longer day.
Where to go
Places in Slitting Mill
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesCannock Chase Heritage Trail
The Slitting Mill section follows Rising Brook past former mill sites and Horns Pool before climbing through woodland.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 90 minutes for the village section
- Locality
- Along Rising Brook
Cannock Chase Forest
The nearby forest extends the village visit with walking, cycling and off-road cycle routes on Cannock Chase.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 120 minutes
- Locality
- On the Cannock Chase edge
The Wolseley Centre
Staffordshire Wildlife Trust's nearby Wolseley Centre makes a useful nature stop beyond the village.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Wolseley Bridge
- Access
- Check the official visitor information before travel.
Food & drink
1 placeThe Horns Inn
A renovated pub and restaurant with a dog-friendly welcome and a large outdoor area overlooking Horns Pool.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Slitting Mill Road
Walks & outdoors
2 placesHorns Pool
A former millpond now used as a coarse fishery, with surviving sluice gates and a waterfall at its outflow.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 120 minutes for a short fishing session or 45 minutes to explore the waterside features
- Locality
- Behind The Horns Inn
- Access
- Day-ticket fishery; confirm current access arrangements before travel.
Trent and Mersey Canal
A nearby canal towpath that forms part of longer circular walks linking Brereton and Slitting Mill.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 90 minutes for a towpath walk
- Locality
- Brereton and Rugeley
History & heritage
1 placeSt John the Baptist Church
A mid-19th-century church remembered for its unusual history as a mission chapel built directly onto the village infant school.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 20 minutes
- Locality
- Church Close
- Access
- Formally closed in 2025; view only from public routes unless current official information confirms access.
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Three ways to explore Slitting Mill
Signature outings
Read the millpond
Find the sluice gates and waterfall where Horns Pool once released water to power tin-plating machinery.
Trace a school-church story
View the church exterior while considering its unusual origin as a mission chapel attached directly to Stonehouse Infant School.
Pause at the village pub
Settle at The Horns Inn after a walk, with its outdoor area overlooking the former millpond.
The village story
Slitting Mill Village Guide
Follow a village story shaped by Rising Brook, ironworking, a millpond and the wooded edge of Cannock Chase.
The Horns by the Chase
The sign outside The Horns Inn shows a red deer stag, one of three deer species that roam Cannock Chase on the other side of the trees. Inside, the pub has been renovated from what one reviewer remembered as "an old cottage style pub" into a white-rendered restaurant with a pool table, log fires, and a menu running from tomato and mozzarella bruschetta to grilled seabass risotto and a peri-peri grilled chicken burger. Sunday brings slow-cooked roasts and a Cherry Bakewell cheesecake. Dogs are welcome on leads, with water bowls and treats left out by the fire.
Reviews are split. One Tripadvisor visitor wrote "Extremely pleased....Excellent service and the food was impressive," while another titled theirs "Sent It Back!!!" over a stale sandwich. Real ales run to Doom Bar, Butty Bach, Black Sheep Bitter and Coach House Winter Ale, with a beer festival every September.
Millpond and Village Practicalities
What settles the argument is the view. The beer garden looks out over Horns Pool, a former millpond with sluice gates and an eighteen-foot waterfall, now a day-ticket coarse fishery with twenty-six pegs holding carp, roach, bream, tench and crucian. Villagers used to skate on it when it froze and then, as one account has it, "repaired to the nearby Horns Inn for refreshments" — which is more or less still the plan.
There is no shop in Slitting Mill itself. For groceries, a post office or a newsagent, Rugeley is about a mile down the road, with its own bus station and a Trent Valley railway station covering roughly the same distance. The 63, 100 and 828A buses run through.
Following the Industrial Brook
Walking is the other reason to come. The Cannock Chase Heritage Trail runs straight through the village — Panel 17 covers Slitting Mill specifically — following Rising Brook past the old mill sites and up through woodland to the pub. A longer circular walk takes in the Trent & Mersey Canal at Brereton. The village sits on the edge of the Cannock Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, so you're on the Chase within minutes of leaving the front door.
The name is the giveaway for what the brook once did. Rising Brook, in the space of little more than a mile, used to power two iron forges, a slitting mill, two corn mills and a colour mill. The slitting mill itself, built around 1611, was reputedly the first of its kind in the Midlands and only the second in England, after one at Dartford in 1590, and by the early 1700s it was taking in some 600 tons of iron rod a year to slit into nail stock. None of it survives — the site became a waterworks pumping station in 1932 — but the village took the industry's name anyway, dropping the older one, Stonehouse, in the late nineteenth century. A philanthropist named Sarah Hopkins, who moved into the house that gave the old name, funded the school that the village church was, oddly, built directly onto the side of. St John the Baptist closed in 2025; its box pews still have cast-iron hoops and ceramic trays for umbrellas, in case you turned up wet.
Gathering Places and Remembered Lives
The Victory Hall, built in 1953, seats 120 and still runs the village's social and charity events.
Mary Sant and her husband William, a blacksmith, lived in a cottage on the old mill site until it was pulled down in 1931. Mary used to make tea for anyone who stopped to paddle or picnic by the brook. It carries her name still.
Stay around Staffordshire
Make a longer stay of it
Travel Fox holiday homes around Staffordshire, linked directly to their property pages.
Cheddleton
Greenways House - Parking, Pool Table and Garden!
- Sleeps 10
- 4 bedrooms
Cheddleton
Lee House Cottage + Annexe
- Sleeps 19
- 8 bedrooms
Leek
Silkwood House | Boutique 4 Bed nr. Peak District
- Sleeps 8
- 4 bedrooms
Stoke-on-Trent
Heather's House
- Sleeps 6
- 2 bedrooms
A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- The Horns Inn — thehornsinn.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Horns Pool — cannockchasedc.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- St John the Baptist Church — facultyonline.churchofengland.org other published source
- Cannock Chase Heritage Trail — cannockchasedc.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Cannock Chase Forest — forestryengland.uk national body or asset manager
- The Wolseley Centre — staffs-wildlife.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Trent and Mersey Canal — canalrivertrust.org.uk national body or asset manager