Tesco, McDonalds and the new Blackwater trading have made the roundabout at Fullbridge busier than ever. It's easy to overlook a small but potent reminder of a tragic death, and a brutal time.

On the wall of the Old Iron Works in Fullbridge, Maldon, off the roundabout and facing the new Costa Coffee on the Blackwater Retail Park, those who look carefully will see a small rectangular stone. It marks the place where Stephen Knight died for his faith on 28th March 1555.

Stephen Knight had lived and worked in the town as a barber, but it was his strong Protestant faith that saw him suffer a terrible fate. He was one of a group of men tried and condemned in London by the infamous Bishop Bonner during the reign of Queen Mary, also known as 'bloody Mary' for her persecution of Protestants.

Knight's main crime was to deny the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation – put simply, this is the notion that when a person takes Holy Communion, the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Protestants do not believe this to be the case and at the time, this was viewed by the Catholic Church as heresy. In the reign of the staunchly Catholic Queen Mary, those who denied transubstantiation were viewed as heretics and hundreds were burned at the stake as a result.

Knight's story is recorded in 'Foxe's Book of Martyrs', an historic work dedicated to telling the stories of many of the victims of this religious persecution under a Tudor queen. In it, he tells how Knight spent some time in Newgate Prison in London with two other Essex martyrs, before being sent back to Maldon to be publicly burned as a gruesome warning to others in his home town.

Foxe records that Knight said a long prayer before his execution, asking the Holy Spirit to give him strength through the fire.

On the same day William Pygot was burned at at Braintree, and the next day John Laurence met the same fate in Colchester, sitting in a chair because his legs were so weak.