Lee Moor History
Over the last 300 the people of Lee Moor have been a community of coal miners and their families. Within a mile of the village this community was looked upon as a rough, tough hard drinking class of men, swearing and fighting over the least thing but amongst themselves were close knit spending much of their time together. Many bell pits and surface mining have been found in the area worked by adults and children alike, usually work was candle lit often causing an explosion of the coal gas. Their lives consisted of low wages, long hours, blood toil and sweat with a short life expectancy. Deaths were also common in the mines, families receiving no compensation or state help. Overwhelmed by poverty and hardship the community spent most evenings in the pubs or taking part in the areas favourite sport cock fighting. The area of Lee Moor was known as the Cockpit Houses back then, having several fight arenas in the community, the birds were especially bred for the sport, and would fight to the death much to the delight of the on looking crowd. The community was visited by John Wesley, a Wakefield preacher who must have had a big impact on the people as they built the first Lee Moor Chapel on the site of one of these cockpits in 1801. The chapel was a small stone building, almost square and had a pulpit from the West Parade Chapel in Wakefield. The sport still continued in the area but died out in the Victorian age. The area was nothing more than a field path up to the 1860s the houses all stone, quarried locally. They lacked water and lavatories, the lavatories were all dry ash shared by several houses and water fetched from the wells in the village. The poor quality of water and the disposal of dirty water into the street was the cause of much illness and death in those days. Lee Moor had two pubs, several shops, a school and chapel at the beginning of last century, the new chapel was situated on Lee Mount and was built in 1874 it is one of only two surviving chapels in Stanley today. The school that was built in 1876 still survives today as a private house, keeping the original character of the building. The shops have all closed, the last closed in the early 1990s but the two pubs remain. The WMC is now privately owned and Bar Stanley the building of which has had several names and was built in 1908 replacing an earlier ale house on the site. The motor garage on Lee Moor is one of very few workshops that survive in the area today. Fenton Lane at the bottom of Lee Moor named after the original coal kings of the area is a quiet little dirt track today, a far cry from the days when it was the main area mined in Lee Moor, the industry that the area owes its history to.
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