By Stephen P. Nunn

We recently ventured into Suffolk and visited the beautiful Tudor manor house, Kentwell Hall, described as “new” in a will of 1563. I remember when Patrick Phillips first took the place on back in 1971. He has certainly made a great go of it since then and the place is renowned for its living history days. On our latest visit we were invited to; “step back 431 years to 1588, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I”. Having negotiated the darkened time tunnel, we suddenly found ourselves rubbing shoulders with alchemists, cooks and silkwomen. There were basket makers, archers and candle makers, players, members of the militia, dyers, felters and washerwomen. All were very well versed in how people lived at that time, how they earned a living, what that ate and how they spent their (rare) leisure time. It was fascinating and extremely well done, made even more enjoyable by a visit to the alehouse – the Saracen’s Head, where we enjoyed some good ale and good period music. Inspired (and no doubt partly fired by that strong ale) my imagination ran riot and turned to Tudor Maldon. I wondered what our town was like in 1588 and if we could mirror the people and places that had been so cleverly recreated at Kentwell.

A good starting place was that alehouse, for, believe it or not, we too had a Saracen’s Head. It stood roughly where the later Grade II Stonecroft building is now located - at Maldon’s 22 High Street (currently MPP Solicitiors). It probably started as an inn during the mid-15th century as a nod to one of the enemies faced by the earlier Crusaders, but it was certainly in full flow in 1588. Mr. Woodhouse was the landlord then and would have been competing for trade with the King’s Head (as in the present-day centre), the Bell (now the White Horse), the Spread Eagle (on the site of Natwest) and the Blue Boar, just over the road in Silver Street. Not a bad choice for a population of no more than1000 townsfolk. Amongst their number was the freeman, Edmund Hunt, who (just slightly later in 1591) stood accused of consulting with one of the greatest alchemists of all time, the notorious Dr. John Dee (1527-1609). Magic was in the air in those days, but dabbling with it could be costly. Given the small number of residents, it is highly likely that disgraced Hunt would have known the popular town cook, Edwarde Reade, and Judith Hosier, a silkwoman who was successful enough to engage five girls as her seamstresses. Just like today, Maldon had a town clerk, Michael Henshaw in 1588 and, instead of a single mayor, a number of bailiffs like George Frend and Edward Garrington. The port and its allied mariners were an important feature of the local economy, but then so were the builders, woodworkers, metalworkers, leatherworkers and clothiers. Maldon’s textile production might have been a minor affair compared with Long Melford, but there was a fulling mill behind the Spread Eagle and we had three clothiers, a dyer, two fullers, two shearman (cloth cutters or sheep shearers) and no less than fourteen weavers. They have left us Dyer’s Road and Tenterfield Road, the place where cloth was dried on hooks fitted to wooden frames. Archers practiced in a field at the end Butt Lane and the militia kept their weaponry in the Moot Hall – the same building that was the occasional venue for plays.

There is a lot more to Maldon 1588 than that – activity on the river and in the fields, religious dissension, immigration, housing and so much besides. We have only scratched the surface, but if you want to find out more you could do no better than read my late friend, Dr. Bill Petchey’s groundbreaking work; ‘A Prospect of Maldon 1500-1689’ (ERO 1991). However, curiously you won’t find much in there about an event that is said to have occurred here in 1579, because I think Bill had his doubts about it. The story goes that Elizabeth I was on a progress through Kentwell’s Suffolk (in 1578) and then our county of Essex. From Colchester she apparently went on to Layer Marney and then to Maldon, where she stayed with the Harris family at their now lost mansion, ‘The Fryers’ (in the area of our current public library). It is likely that ‘The Fryers’ looked a bit like a mini version of Kentwell Hall. What a shame it isn’t still there, as it would have made our recreation of Maldon 1588 even more special. Maldon’s evidence is, nevertheless, still all around us. If you want to experience it, why not have a pint in the Bell (sorry, I mean the White Horse), then pop over to All Saints and look at the beautiful fragments of the glass arms of Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, and his third wife, Jane Seymour. Then, if the Moot Hall is open, pop upstairs and stare into the eyes of the grey lady. She is a bit later, c1595-1600, but for me that’s when history comes alive and makes Tudor Maldon just as special as Kentwell.