Red Cow reeked of vinegar and had spittoons in the sawdust

His groundbreaking book Here’s Good Luck to the Pint Pot (Kelvin Brown Publications 1988) continues to be the best source on the subject.

I remember him telling me that he found researching the principal inns – places like the Blue Boar, the White Horse, the King’s Head and the Swan – relatively easy.

It was the smaller beer houses which created more of a challenge for him. That’s not surprising really, because some of these were literally “cottage industries”, that brewed on site and used their front rooms as bars.

The Beer Act of 1830 still required them to be licensed, but they rarely appear by name in trades directories or in the census returns.

Not only that, the beer house keeper usually had an additional trade or two to supplement the often meagre income.

A good example of these is the Red Cow that once operated in Maldon’s Fambridge Road.

Ken touches upon it in his book and says that it opened under a Samuel George Smith in 1851.

• The old Red Cow pub sign

Sure enough, there is a 45 year old beer house keeper called Samuel Smith in the 1851 Census.

He lived in the Pinchgut Hall Lane (as Fambridge Road had been known since the early 18th Century), along with his wife, five daughters and one son, and he also worked as a carpenter.

At that stage the red-brick, terraced house that was the Red Cow would have been on the outskirts of town and was surrounded by farmland.

It wasn’t far from Nightingale Corner (now the junction with Cross Road) and such passing traffic as there was consisted of farm carts and those going to and from the Fambridge Ferry river crossing.

The regulars, therefore, doubtless consisted of resident agricultural labourers and those travelling the Ferry Road route.

Samuel Smith had a third string to his bow as he was also a dairyman and kept his cows in a field to the rear of the premises. Their milk provided him and his family with extra money and gave the little beer house its quirky name.

Samuel might have been its originator, but the Red Cow will forever be associated with the Filby family (who were already living in the road in 1851).

Their occupation of the beer house started around 1859 and they also had a farm, ran a dairy, a bake house and began brewing on site.

The patriarch was Samuel who, as well as running all of the above, was also a coalman.

He is in the 1861 Census, along with wife Ann, sons William and Samuel, a visitor and two lodgers, and held the licence of the Red Cow until his death in 1862, when Ann, took over in her own right.

The 1871 Census lists her there as a widow beer house keeper and actually identifies the Red Cow by name.

She served the beer until her death in 1888 and it was then time for son William to take over.

He appears in the 1891 return as “baker and beer seller” at what, by then, had become 100 Fambridge Road.

He is recorded as a 58 year old single man with two servants and a boarder.

He is still at number 100 in 1901, but interestingly only as a “baker”, with nephew Frederick Filby listed as “publican”.

William died on May 19, 1901. The beer house survived until around 1910, but by 1911 it just appears as a private house.

Sometime between 1926 and 1933, number 100 was re-numbered 162 and today you wouldn’t know that it had ever served its former purpose.

• The building as it is today

Ken interviewed an old resident who actually remembered visiting it when it was open.

One of the Markhams, of Maldon Rock fame, told Ken it was “very dark…stank of vinegar…and amongst the sawdust on the floor stood large spittoons” – an earthy, description that could come straight out of the works of Thomas Hardy.

Another friend of mine, former Maldon magistrate Peter Hedge, has told me that his ancestors lived next door to the Red Cow and that his grandfather, Austin Hedge (1856-1926), used to drink there.

A wonderful surviving sepia photo shows Austin standing outside the recently closed building, accompanied by son Harold and their horse and cart.

It was a different world then. The beer was doubtless good, cool, crystal clear and enjoyed at a penny or two a pint (we know it was still only 2d in 1900).

The Red Cow was only a few doors down from my house, a building that is of a contemporary age.

Unlike my predecessors I might not be able to pop down there for a “quick one”, but whenever I pass by and give it a longing thirsty glance, it will forever be the Red Cow.