Maldon is not one of England's better-known medieval towns. It was not
a major player during the period when medieval urbanization is
best documented, its importance lying in a mistier period of the
Middle Ages, and consequently little attention has been
paid 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,
constructed a burh at Maldon as
part of his programme to reconquer (from the Danes) and fortify
eastern England. In 912 his forces had camped there during a campaign,
while he had augmented ancient fortifications at Witham, establishing a
burh there. The choice of encampment at Maldon may have been because
the site was defensible, and has led to speculation that some kind of
earthworks already existed there too. Whether new or rebuilt, Maldon's
defences helped it resist a Danish siege in 917 until relief arrived.
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 leading inland near its
crossing of the river, is uncertain; perhaps both. 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's mint is known to have been active from the time of
Athelstan's law to the late eleventh century. The trading community already
in existence prior to the burh spread eastwards towards the edge of the fort
in the decades of relative peace following the Battle of Maldon. It was
in proximity to a gateway into this refuge that the marketplace developed.
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.
History of
medieval Maldon
