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Origins and early growth

Maldon is not one of England's better-known medieval towns. It never assumed any prominence and consequently has had little attention paid to it by historians. Yet, as a town relatively late in maturing, it provides an interesting comparison to larger towns.

Maldon's name is principally known for its association with the Danish victory at the Battle of Maldon (991), whose fame rests principally on the fact of it being immortalized in a fine Anglo-Saxon poem. The battle took place to the southeast of the town. There are no references in the poem to the site or its proximity to Maldon, nor any hints that refuge for the defeated Anglo-Saxons might have been nearby, but nor should we expect to find any, for the poem is an ode to heroism not a chronicle of events. However, the Danish raid that led to the battle may have been targeting Maldon, as one of Essex's only two towns (and easily accessible from the water).

Maldon's name points to Saxon origins, dun being the word for hill; archaeology has shown that a late Roman port on low ground (later Heybridge) was thereafter settled by Saxons from the times of their earliest arrival, although this site became marshy and forced settlement to move to higher ground. Maldon's centre stands on a hill atop the south bank of the River Blackwater which, immediately east of Maldon, becomes a wide estuary for several miles before entering the North Sea. In 916 Edward the Elder, whose forces had camped there during a campaign a few years earlier, constructed a burh at Maldon as part of his programme to reconquer (from the Danes) and fortify eastern England. A rectangular earthern rampart is known to have existed to the west of the medieval settlement, on high ground. Whether this was the burh defences, or evidence of a Roman fort guarding the road from Chelmsford near its crossing of the river, is uncertain. That Maldon was among the minority of Edward's burhs to have developed into a medieval borough is doubtless due to the fact that it also served as a regional market centre. Its value as a protected magnet for trade was subsequently recognized through the establishment of a mint at Maldon, Athelstan's law of 928 decreeing that every town and burh should have one, with the number of moneyers varying (from one to eight) depending on the settlement's importance – Maldon and Colchester together seem to have been served by four.

Maldon was fragmented into several manorial estates after, if not before, the Norman Conquest. Great Maldon (as opposed to adjacent Little Maldon) was a manor in the king's hand. At the time of Domesday there were 180 houses held by the king's burgesses. It had the status of a half-hundred, and as such had its own court. The half-hundred had been carved out of the hundred of Dengie, whose lands surrounded it. This is perhaps why Domesday reports only 81 acres of land as being associated with the borough, and these were in the hands of a small minority of the householders. In the twelfth century, the lordship of Great Maldon was divided.

The town comprised three parishes (two of which were united in the thirteenth century), with settlement dispersed among a number of foci:

• All Saints, located on the highest part of the site adjacent to the earthern ramparts; here was the town's marketplace, and here the Carmelites had established a friary by 1293. The church itself was in existence by the twelfth century.
• St. Peter's, stretching eastwards along the road linking the marketplace and the harbour, and northwards to incorporate settlement around a bridge across the Chelmer; craftsmen and merchants established were settled near the church itself – this perhaps representing the earliest focus of urban settlement.
• St. Mary's, which was founded shortly before the Conquest to serve the growing settlement around the harbour facilities on the Blackwater, and rebuilt in the Norman period.
To the west of the town was Little Maldon, a manor that was part of the Honour of Peverell. There Beeleigh Abbey and the Hospital of St. Giles were founded (the latter before 1235). The hospital, named for the patron saint of cripples and lepers, was to take care of leprous burgesses and the king granted that it should receive all bread, ale, meat and fish that the town authorities confiscated because of sub-standard quality. A further separate estate was Earl's Maldon.

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Created: August 29, 1998. Last update: November 11, 2002

© Stephen Alsford, 1998-2003