HISTORIC MALDON: Maldon's Ancient Fortress
Maldon residents and visitors are well aware of its medieval origins, from the Historic Hythe Quay to the High Street with its Georgian fronted medieval coaching inns, shops and residences.
But you have to turn away from the High Street, further up the hill and into quiet residential streets to discover Maldon's most ancient heritage.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Kind Edward the Elder (son of Alfred the Great) founded a Burh (fortified town) in Maldon in 916 A.D. In this, he was continuing his father's policy of creating strong bases to fight off Viking raids.
There were many such burhs (a word which gives us Borough,
Bury, and Burgh as part of place names). A settlement would be enclosed by substantial ditches with an earth bank on the inside of the circuit, and a wooden palisade on top. It was common to reuse Roman or Iron Age fortifications, and one of the puzzles surrounding Maldon's Burh is whether it used an existing Iron Age hill fort and/or a Roman fort. Some Saxonburhs, like Wareham in Dorset, still have substantial remains, but subsequent building has erased most visible traces of ours, though Nathaniel Salmon described visible ramparts in 1740.
However, Maldon Archaeological Group did a lot of detective work in the 1980's, published as 'The Maldon Burh Jigsaw' by member Paul Brown. Piecing together clues found in a dozen different
locations, they concluded that the burh boundary ran north from the end of Highlands Drive and along Lodge Road and Dykes Chase, then east to the western part of Beeleigh Road, curving south behind Gate Street to the corner of St. Peter's Hospital, then west along the hospital's boundary. The present London Road would have run through the middle of the settlement, and the development of the medieval town down the hill would have started outside the east gate, whereSpital Road, Fambridge Road, Gate Street and the High Street converge.
One visible medieval relic of this site is Maldon's Ware Pond, near the top of Spital Road. This picturesque spot was possibly connected with the burh fortifications, but was mainly used as a
public washing place and for the damping of wooden cart wheels to prevent shrinkage and damage. There are many mysteries lying buried beneath the historic heart of our town, but we are unlikely to find out more unless current buildings are demolished and replaced – probably a price too high to pay.
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