News in Maldon

After a year when there has been little income for the iconic Thames sailing barges of Hythe Quay, Maldon councillors will vote on whether to reduce their wharfage fees this year - and how much by.

Members of Maldon District Council's Strategy and Resources Committee will discuss three possible options on the fees for the 2021/22 financial year at a meeting on Thursday, 28 January.

The Sadd family is one of Maldon's better-known families: John Sadd and Sons were major employers in building and the timber trade, starting with a small business at Fullbridge in 1729 and remaining major employers until 1994.

John Granger Sadd, like many Victorians, had a large family of eleven children. His tenth child was a girl, Myra Eleanor Sadd, born 3 October 1872, and she was to become famous in her own right, not as a businesswoman but as a campaigner for women's suffrage (votes for women) Coincidentally, 1872 was the year that the National Society for Women's Suffrage was formed.

IT'S been another seven days of big news stories in Maldon, from the announcement that a bank branch is to disappear from the town's High Street through to news that millions of pounds of pandemic grant money will be with local businesses in the forthcoming days.

Here at Nub News we like to make your life easier so if you've missed any of the local news this week, don't worry.

Maldon Nub News aims to be supportive to EVERY element of the community from business and shops to people and charities and clubs and sports organisations.

Everyone is finding it tough at the moment and wants life to get back to normal.

The county's fire service has been praised by inspectors for how it has kept the public and residents safe during the pandemic.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has also praised the way Essex County Fire and Rescue Service has supported key partners throughout.

Organisers of Maldon's world famous mud race are planning to put the event on again in August - hoping that the threat from Covid-19 will have been reduced by then.

The challenge of The Maldon Mud Race is to race through the thick and sticky mud of the estuary off of Promenade Park.

The main company backing the Bradwell B project is encouraging Essex graduates to consider a career in nuclear power as part of an international scholarship programme.

CGN (China General Nuclear Power Group), the main shareholder in Bradwell B, is supporting Beijing's Tsinghua University's search for applicants for a scholarship on their International Master's Program in Nuclear Engineering and Management.

A project to collect community donations for NHS frontline workers at local hospitals has a collection point at a well-known Maldon pub.

While the Queen Victoria pub in Spital Road is currently closed, the left-hand door of the pub is open to allow people to place items on a collection table.

The Covid-19 infection rate for Maldon district has continued to fall in the past week and has dropped more than 30 per cent in six days.

The latest complete figures for the seven days up to Tuesday, 12 January, show that there were 395 new cases recorded for Maldon district, equal to 608.4 cases per 100,000.

A ruthless invader equipped with armoured war machines pursues a beaten army and thousands of civilian refugees to a small coastal town. A motley collection of civilian boats of all shapes and sizes – "fishing smacks… steam launches from the Thames, yachts" - comes to their rescue. The Royal Navy fights a heroic battle to gain them time as they flee.

This sounds like Dunkirk in 1940, in which Maldon's "little ships" played no small part, but it's actually a description written in 1897 of an alien invasion, and the evacuation of civilians from Maldon and the Blackwater.