A very quiet place is Maldon—at one time a great centre of the corn trade, which, in consequence of railways, has shifted elsewhere—and which the Great Eastern Railway has brought within an hour and a half’s ride of London. The population is about six thousand, and, by the last census, it seems slightly to have declined. In the Town Hall are portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne, Charles II. and George III., and Dr. Plume, a Maldon celebrity, of whose career I have no particulars, save that he was a clergyman, and presented a library of over 6,000 volumes to the town. It is open daily from 10 till 12. The great artist, J. R. Herbert, R.A., was a native of the place, and Landseer studied there in his early days. Its chief claim to fame seems to have been that it was the birthplace of Edward Bright, a shopkeeper in the town, who died in 1750, and was so enormously fat that he weighed about 616 lbs. and seven men were on one occasion buttoned in his waistcoat without breaking a stitch or straining a button.
Remains around Maldon testify to the antiquity of the place. On the west side are the remains of a camp formed by Edward the Elder as far back as 920. Near the town are the remains of a Lepers’ Hospital, which makes one note with thankfulness that, thanks to sanitary science in England, we have no need of such buildings now, and we rejoice that the good old times are gone. By the side of the river, about a mile from the town, are the remains of Beeleigh Abbey, founded for monks of the Premonstratensian order in 1180; considerable remains still exist, but have been much altered in the process of converting the building into a farmhouse, still there is a good deal remaining well worthy the attention of the antiquary, though at one time the chapter-house, which has a fine groined roof, was used as a pig-sty. In the Abbey was buried Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, in 1483. One of the Maldon churches has a triangular tower. It is said that only in Italy is there another tower of the same kind. I may also state, as one of the peculiarities of Maldon, that the custom of Borough English, by means of which the youngest son succeeds to the copyhold estates of his father, still prevails there. Thus altogether a pleasant ancient flavour attaches to the place, in spite of its Reform Club, which dates from 1874. One might do worse than live at Maldon, where good houses are to be had at a bargain, and where in the summer-time, far from the wicked world, there is a good deal of boating, and where in the winter time, in the coming glacial era, which Sir Robert Ball confidently predicts as reserved for the people of England, you may skate as far as Chelmsford, a consummation by no means devoutly to be wished. For bicycles Maldon is by no means favourable, incredible as it may seem to those who will persist in believing that Essex is a flat country. There are two hills in the town, one of which is pronounced to be the most dangerous hill in all Essex for bicyclists.
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