Cann Hall

Cann Hall is a ward, and former civil parish, in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It is north of Stratford and Forest Gate, east of Leyton, and west of Wanstead Flats, the southernmost tip of Epping Forest.HistoryThe Domesday Book of 1086 lists the landowner as Hugh de Montfort, whose family took possession of a great deal of land after the Norman conquest. His daughter Adela gave the holding to the canons of Holy Trinity, Aldgate in 1121, and it is likely that the later name of the manor is a contraction of "Canons Hall".The priory at Holy Trinity retained Cann Hall until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in 1532. The only buildings attached to the farm at that time were two old barns and a little cottage, but nevertheless several petitions were made to the crown for ownership. Bought by one Nicholas Sympson, the manor then passed through a succession of short-lived ownerships until 1671, when it was sold to William Colegrave for £2750.The Colegrave family continued to hold Cann Hall as a country estate in the early 19th century. Its tenants were among those whose livestock was permitted to graze on the adjacent Wanstead Flats, which at the time belonged to The Crown. With others they fought against the buying up of the Flats by private landowners, but in 1851-2 they lost part of the Flats in a protracted legal battle (though later much of the land was saved for the public, and is now administered by the City of London Corporation).