HISTORIC MALDON: Maldon's Market Hill Garden
The combination of lockdown and unusually mild weather will have driven many Maldon residents to seek out oases of calm in the town centre where they can enjoy an outdoor coffee and snack.
A short walk down Market Hill takes you to such a place: Market Hill Garden, maintained by the Town Council. It represents a gap in the beautiful houses that curve down the hill, and was indeed the site of several early, possibly medieval buildings, numbers 22-24 Market Hill. Deemed "unstable", these were demolished in the 1930s.
Like many other old Maldon buildings demolished elsewhere, it's debatable whether such steps would be taken these days, but the council did at least decide eventually to make a virtue of the site by turning it into public gardens, with magnificent views over the estuary.
A winding path takes visitors between rock-lined flower beds, and there are benches where you can take in the view. A tree at the back sits in an area maintained by the All Saints Brownies.
The information panel mentions something interesting about the rocks lining the flower beds: these aren't the neat rocks you find in a garden centre, but recycled waste from Heybridge's Bentalls Iron Works. When iron ore is superheated in furnaces to make iron, it produces huge quantities of waste, known as slag or clinker. Many of these rocks have bubbles in them, indicating stone which has melted and cooled. But there's more besides: there are whole sections of brickwork with clinker and patches of metal adhering to them, and one "stone" is actually a formed semi-circular section of clay material that may have been part of the furnaces. Walk a few yards into the garden and you forget the heavy traffic and associated fumes. It's a small but lovely haven with spectacular views, and the council all those years ago created something special out of the wreckage of some of Maldon's medieval buildings and Heybridge's industrial past.
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