It begins at the Middlesex Filter Beds Weir, below Lea Bridge, and is situated in the (modern) London Borough of Hackney.

The River Lea (or Lee) has a long history of use for navigation, with records indicating that the Abbot of Waltham was authorised to make improvements in 1190,[1] and evidence for tidal gates at Bow from the reign of King Edward I, when Henry de Bedyk, the prior at Halliwell Priory and owner of the nearby tide mills, erected a structure some time before 1307.

[4] The commissioners advertised in the London Gazette and other newspapers that they wanted to borrow £35,000 to finance the improvements, to which there was a huge response.

Work on the whole scheme progressed quickly, and the contract for the Hackney Cut was awarded to Jeremiah Ilsley on 18 January 1768.

This had been set at 40 tons in 1805, but with the clause removed, the navigation between the Thames and Tottenham was gradually rebuilt to take 100-ton barges.

[14] From 1829, water was abstracted at Lea Bridge, from the natural watercourse, by the East London Waterworks Company, to avoid the increasing pollution of the Navigation.

The waterworks was located to the south of Old Ford Locks, and the company built a canal in 1830 which ran along the east bank of the Hackney Cut to transfer water from Lea Bridge for processing.

[16] In 1824, George Duckett, the son of Sir George Duckett, 1st Baronet who had owned the Stort Navigation, obtained an Act of Parliament to link the Hackney Cut to the Regents Canal, which he hoped would result in much of the trade which passed onto the Thames from the Lee Navigation being re-routed to Regents Canal Dock.