On a list of Spreyton tax-payers in 1525, John Canne was recorded as paying tax on goods worth £2, indicating only moderate wealth (it does not mention his place of residence, but it was almost certainly Fuidge). It seems likely that the Canns were at that time standard yeoman farmers, and Fuidge was an unremarkable Devon long-house of cob and thatch, built by an early member of the Cann family. However, the Canns quickly became wealthier. By 1544, John Canne was paying tax on £10 of goods, the biggest amount in the parish apart from two people who were big landowners. The Canns appear also to have owned or rented part of Falkedon, and possibly other nearby farms.

By the early 18th century, the Canns were grand enough to be calling themselves “gentlemen” rather than yeomen. During the 18th century they acquired lime kilns and quarries in Drewsteignton. Burnt lime was at the time the only artificial fertilizer, and the quarries made the Canns very rich indeed.They used their money inter alia to extend and embellish their farmhouse at Fuidge, adding an elegant double-bowed front to the house, and building a fine red-brick serpentine wall in the garden, making it the most imposing residence in the parish. There was even a fish-pond or lake. The Canns by this time were, with the Battishills, the main landowners in Spreyton and also owned farms in Hittisleigh and Drewsteignton. There are a number of memorials to the Cann family in Spreyton church. They always farmed the land attached to Fuidge as their “home farm”, but most of their other farms were let for income.

The eldest son was always traditionally given the name John. The John Cann who inherited the property in 1807 was a man of considerable enterprise and ambition. In 1798, fired with patriotic enthusiasm, he raised a company of volunteers (a sort of Home Guard) to defend the neighbourhood against a possible French invasion. From then on, he was often referred to as Captain Cann.

Captain Cann’s next exploit, in about 1816, was to open a bank in Exeter with two partners, called the ‘Devonshire Bank’. When Captain Cann died in 1819, he left everything to his widow Rebecca, who took his place in the partnership. Unfortunately, there could scarcely have been a worse time for starting a bank, as the boom brought about by the Napoleonic wars was coming to an abrupt end. On 20 December 1820, the bank was forced to suspend payment ‘in consequence of a severe and unexpected run’, and the partners were declared officially bankrupt. Although the partners were jointly and severally liable for all the debts of the bank and Rebecca must have struggled, she managed to retain Fuidge, at any rate for a while, probably because she was responsible only for the debts incurred in the short period when she was a partner. But she no doubt had to mortgage it heavily, and it was finally sold in 1838. Local people could not understand how the Cann fortune could have disappeared so rapidly.