Welcome to Cannara
because you most certainly are!
We love our home and we are passionate about providing great customer service, quality rooms and wholesome food.
Come and enjoy with us this area of outstanding natural beauty.
Liz and Dave Fisher
Cannara: A house with an interesting history
Built by Winkle
Cannara was built by a man called Edward Winkle in the 1870s. It was originally called Fromefield. He lived there until he died in 1898.
Mr Winkle was a property developer and builders merchant in Malvern at a time that the area was expanding greatly, due to the Malvern Water Cure and the coming of the railways. He bought up quite a number of plots along the north side of Barnards Green road and over time built many of the properties you can see nearby. Cannara, though, was his home.
It could have been very different
In front of Cannara is an area of common land, so typical of Malvern, but it might have looked very different!
In 1881 Mr Winkle decided that his front garden was not big enough and enclosed some of the common land in front of his house – almost out to the current road line, about 1/2 an acre. This activity was known as encroachment and was not legal but at the time a lot of people were doing this, including the lord of the manor of Great Malvern, Lady Emily Foley.
There was a group of gentlemen keen to preserve the wonderful commons and open spaces around Malvern and they had set up the Malvern Hills Preservation Committee. The group included a local landowner called Henry Lakin. They needed to prove in court that encroachment was illegal, but Lady Foley was too powerful to take on, so they needed to find someone else and Edward Winkle’s action served their purposes.
In October 1881 Lakin used his commoners rights to serve a writ on Winkle ordering him to take down the wall around the garden. Winkle didn’t and the case ended up in the Crown Court where the judge ruled against the enclosure. He stated that the evidence produced was sufficient to use for future cases and as a result, the case was cited in the 1884 Malvern Hills Act which to this day protects the hills and commons from encroachment and development.
So, in staying at Cannara you are a part of Malvern History!
An early picture of the guesthouse
Here is an early picture of Fromefiled, now Cannara. We don’t know exactly when it was taken but it shows two ladies, one old and one young.
If it was taken before 1894, the older one could be Edward’s wife Sarah, who died that year. The younger one would then be his daughter Sarah.
If it was taken later, the younger lady is probably Edward’s second wife Harriet Lees.
