MALDON wasn’t built for cars and, like other ancient towns, its visual beauty can sometimes be spoilt by street parking and the constant flow of traffic along its ancient and narrow thoroughfares.

A hundred or so years ago, however, it was quite a different story.

There might have been a few cars around (the first ones appeared in Maldon around 1902) but it was essentially still a horse-drawn town.

The proliferation of horses – on our neighbourhood farms, pulling carts and wagons for local businesses and simply being ridden on a daily basis by rich and poor alike, necessitated a network of allied trades.

Among these were saddlers, harness makers, veterinary surgeons, ostlers, carriage-makers and, of course, wheelwrights and blacksmiths (or, more correctly, farriers).

At one time a forge and wheelwright’s shop were a common sight and there were a number of them here in Maldon.

According to William White’s Gazetteer of 1848, there was a wheelwright in Fambridge Road and smiths and farriers based in London Road, Wantz Road, the High Street, “Union Lane” (now Cromwell Lane), and down on the Hythe.

A combined, and now all but forgotten, smithy and wheelwright’s workshop also stood at the end of Mill Road, at its junction with the Wantz (and Mundon and Cross Roads).

All trace of it has now disappeared, but it was definitely there, as attested by a few surviving, but now very rare, images.

Over the years the surnames Marsh and Burch have been mentioned to me, but they do not appear in the Gazetteer of 1848.

So I decided to turn to later trades directories to try to track them down and work backwards to establish the origins of that illusive, historic business.

We know that both men were definitely on site in 1913 – William Burch being the blacksmith and Thomas Marsh the wheelwright.

However, the directory for the previous year (1912) just has Thomas running the wheelwright’s shop and William Burch is a shipsmith on the Hythe (possibly where Maldon Little Ship Club is now).

Before that, Thomas’s father, William Marsh, is listed as being the wheelwright in Mill Road in 1908, but as “William Marsh and son” in 1906.

They worked alongside blacksmith Edward Gossett up to at least 1910.

The Burgesses Roll of 1899 shows William Marsh living in a house nearby at 70 Mill Road and Thomas, the son, in a separate home at 30 Cross Road.

Going back to 1886 William is included in the trades directory, as well as “wheelwright and smith” Joseph Harris.

William Marsh doesn’t appear at all in 1882.

There is, however, a James Smee there - “blacksmith, wheelwright and hay and straw dealer”.

The smithy, standing on the edge of the road and backing on to open farmland, complete with its saw pit, clearly appears on the ordnance survey of 1873, so must have existed long before the time of the Marsh family.

Sure enough we find a John Hills running it in 1863, but nothing appears earlier than that.

So in summary, as far as the Marsh/Burch dynasty is concerned, it would seem that the smithy/wheelwrights started sometime between 1848 and 1863, but under different tradesmen.

William Marsh took over around 1882/1886, gradually passed it over to his son, who then went into partnership with William Burch in 1912/13.

It still appears on the ordnance survey of 1922 but it must have closed shortly afterwards, in the late-1920s when the horseless carriage had well and truly become king.

Two bungalows now occupy the site. They belong to the Price Almshouse charity, whose objective (in the rather archaic language of a scheme of 1958) is to provide and maintain the houses for “poor persons of not less than 65 years of age, resident in the Borough of Maldon and providing assistance to the almspeople or such other aged poor inhabitants of Maldon by way of pensions or otherwise”.

In the front garden, where countless horses must have been shod and many wheels had new iron rims fitted, is a brick pillar with a foundation stone.

It reads: “These almshouses were provided by a bequest of HJ Price FRCS (1854-1932) a general practitioner in Maldon”.

It is a very worthy and much needed provision, but I wonder how many of the residents who have lived in those two properties knew what was going on in their gardens in the era when horse and cart dominated Maldon.