Growth of Cannock Wood
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
In 1666 Cannock Wood was a hamlet of eighteen houses and White’s 1851 Gazetteer records that Cannock Wood had “a few good farms, and 275 inhabitants, and includes a large portion of the open heath, where there are a number of cottages, with small plots of garden attached”.
There had been some limited development in the late 1920s when a row of semi-detached properties was built overlooking the newly built covered reservoir and extensive Playing Field which is held in trust for the village. For several hundred years the principal landowner had been the Paget family, the Marquises of Anglesey, but in the 1920s they auctioned off their lands and properties. Until the 1930s there was still just a small number of homes scattered around the parish, mostly farmhouses or cottages where there had been informal enclosure of the surrounding heathland. Under the ownership of the Pagets, the coal and iron resources of Cannock Chase were exploited and there were pits immediately adjacent to Cannock Wood from 1775 until 1973, providing the major source of income for the majority of households.
The main phase of development was in the 1960s, expanding the population considerably and since then development has mostly been infill.
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
