Like many English manors, Pitsea Hall changed ownership repeatedly over the centuries. Those changes link the estate with several families whose names appear in historical accounts of Pitsea.
The 1539 grant to Thomas Cromwell is the best-known historical association. Cromwell was one of the most powerful figures at Henry VIII's court, but his fall was rapid: he was executed in 1540. His ownership forms only one part of a much longer manorial history, although it eventually provided the name by which the house is now known.
William White's nineteenth-century account of Pitsea described Pitsea Hall as an old farmhouse near the creek which gave its name to a manor. White recorded that the manor had been held by the Cromwell, Howard and Cook families and had passed from the Cooks to the Moyer family. These names show how the estate's ownership continued to change long after the Tudor period.
Directories from the nineteenth century portray Pitsea as a very small rural community. Farming remained central to the local economy, and Pitsea Hall itself was described as a farmhouse. This is a useful reminder that the grand-sounding word “manor” did not mean the surrounding area resembled a modern country-house estate at every point in its history.
Later nineteenth-century records still referred to the manorial rights of Pitsea Hall. At that time the parish contained only a few hundred residents and was surrounded by heavy agricultural land, creeks and marshes. The hall remained part of a landscape in which farming, the church and the railway were among the most important local features.