There is evidence to support the existence of a football club in Stamford as far back as 1870 & various clubs came & went in the next twenty years until 1894 when the town’s two most prominent clubs Stamford Town & Rutland Ironworks agreed to amalgamate. Initially the club adopted the name of the Rutland Ironworks who were viewed as the stronger of the two, but the current club’s existence is generally accepted to date back to 1896 when the Stamford Town name was adopted to give the club a higher profile. It was to be some years before the club became known as “The Daniels” after Daniel Lambert, the heaviest British man ever, who died in 1809 in Stamford weighing 52 stone or thereabouts and is buried in St Martin’s churchyard in the town.