Standon

Paths, Pubs and Practicalities

The Old Post Office on Church Lane hasn't sold a stamp in years, but the parish council has just built a new stile and steps to reach it anyway, part of wider path work including a boardwalk near Cranberry and renewed steps linking Weston Lane to Butthouse Lane. Standon has around 35 footpaths and bridleways, which get more attention than its high street, mostly because it doesn't have one.

There's no pub in the village. CAMRA's listings for Standon, Staffordshire turn up nothing (a Star and a Bell that surface in general searches belong to a different Standon, in Hertfordshire). The nearest are the Star Inn at Copmere End, dog-friendly with a large garden and closed Mondays except bank holidays, and the Cock Inn at Woodseaves, both a short drive towards Eccleshall. No shop or butcher either.

Cop Mere and Family Stops

Cop Mere is the reason to bring boots: a reed-fringed lake scoured out by glaciation, fed by the headwaters of the River Sow, and designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The circular walk passes St Catherine's Well and continues through woodland past a string of pools to Walk Mill, where the Sow picks up the Meece Brook before reaching the mill at Worston. Paths run on to Swynnerton via Biddles Lane, though there's no right of way between footpaths 29 and 35 through Cotes Lodge.

For families there are playgrounds at Standon and Cotes Heath, the Cotes Heath & Standon Village Hall, and All Saints CE First School with a Busy Bees pre-school attached.

Norman Stone and Domesday Standon

All Saints Church stands at the crossroads, Grade I listed. The west wall of the nave and the north aisle are Norman, and the 14th-century west tower survived a rebuild in 1846–47, probably to designs by Gilbert Scott. Inside is a 12th-century font and a 15th-century brass, plus incised slabs to Francis Ross, who died in 1500, and Nicholas Hyde, who died in 1526.

Standon appears in the Domesday Book with nine households — 11 villagers, three smallholders, three slaves and a priest — worth two pounds a year to its lord, with a mill valued at five shillings. Robert of Stafford was tenant-in-chief by 1086; before that it belonged to a lord called Siward.

The Boys' Home, Steam and Eccleshall

From 1885 to 1947, Weston Lane was home to the Waifs and Strays' Society's Standon Boys' Farm Home, only the Society's second boys' home. It opened for 50 boys, farming land leased from the local MP, Thomas Salt, and grew to take 90 by 1892, with a football team, a brass band, and annual holidays to Rhyl. In February 1947, nine boys plotted to kill the headmaster and shot dead an assistant master, Peter Fieldhouse, instead; the boy responsible was named Cawley. A public inquiry recommended the school's closure, and it shut that year. The site is now an outdoor education centre.

A couple of miles off, Mill Meece Pumping Station keeps its two steam engines, the Ashton Frost and the Hathorn Davey, preserved by volunteers with occasional open days. Eccleshall, five miles off, has the shops and pubs Standon lacks, a Georgian high street, and a monthly market under the Royal Oak arches.

Village Hall Life

A WI group and a Tuesday Club still meet at the village hall, and a mobile library still calls on a street that lost its last shop years ago.