Our beloved Founder Sir Robert Stanes was born in London on May 13th 1841. His father was James Stanes, a ship – owner of London, a free born citizen of that city. Robert Stanes was educated at Campdon House School, Brighton. He schooled till the age of sixteen, after which he worked in the office of Tolman, Livingston & Co., Ship brokers, London.
At the tender age of seventeen, Sir Robert Stanes set sail for India, on his father’s ship ‘The Trafalgar’ and arrived in Madras in 1858. He travelled to Coonoor to help his brothers to manage the family’s coffee estates in the Nilgiris. The brothers pioneered the present large plantation industry, first in coffee and later in tea, in the hilly areas of Annamalais, Nilgiris and Yercaud in South India.
Being convicted by the Holy Spirit after he read Bishop Ryle’s tract ASSURANCE, he at once commenced a Sunday Bible School for the children of his Anglo-Indian employees. Unfortunately, many of the children attending this Sunday School could neither read nor write. Moved by this, he started “The Coimbatore Day School” in November 1862 in a rented house near the Kumaran Market. The beginning was small. The School had just four pupils – two girls, two boys and two teachers.
From there, the School moved to premises adjacent to and now occupied by the General Post Office and operated there for more than 50 years, first as “The Coimbatore Day School” and later as the “Stanes European High School”, a co-educational residential institution.
It was Robert Stanes who gave to Coimbatore its industrial importance. In the memorable year 1861, he found the climate of Coimbatore suitable for the curing of coffee, and set up the Stanes Coffee Curing works, the first of many of his companies in Coimbatore.
In the year 1870, he married Harriet Huntingdon Harris in England. He returned with his wife to Coimbatore at the end of 1870. They had six daughters and two sons. In November 1888, he founded the Coimbatore Spinning and Weaving Company Limited and it opened on August 1890, the first in South India and the precursor of the industrialization of Coimbatore District. For the next 15 years the business (Stanes & Co.), his church services and the school –work grew.