Maldon

Quayside Barges and the Hilltop Town

Hythe Quay is lined with Thames sailing barges, ten to fifteen of them moored where the Blackwater estuary widens below the town. Some are still working boats: Cooks Yard on the quay still builds and repairs them, and once a year they race, finishing here with prize-giving on the water. St Mary's Church stands above the moorings, its Norman nave dating to around 1130 and its tower a landmark for barges coming up the river. Start here, on the waterfront, and the rest of Maldon climbs the hill behind you.

The town sits on a hilltop above the meeting of two rivers, the Chelmer and the Blackwater. Three landslips scar the north-facing river cliff, where the underlying London Clay shows signs of continuing instability. Walk up into the centre and you reach the Moot Hall, a brick-towered civic building from around 1420, converted by the corporation in 1576. Inside is the chair of Edward Bright, the "Fat Man of Maldon," who at his death in 1750 was reportedly the heaviest man in England at 665 pounds.

Coaching Inns and Maldon Salt

The Blue Boar Hotel on Silver Street is one of Maldon's oldest buildings, put up in the second half of the fourteenth century by the de Vere family, Earls of Oxford, and long a coaching inn. It serves lunch daily from noon to three and hosts beer festivals; rooms run from £85 to £170. One guest called it "everything that an old coaching house should be." The Queen Victoria and the Salero Lounge, a café-bar on the High Street, cover the town's other ends.

Maldon's name reaches the wider world through salt. The Maldon Crystal Salt Company has hand-harvested pyramid-shaped flakes from estuary seawater since 1882, and they are sold worldwide and prized by chefs. The town also holds the first shop in Britain designated a "supermarket," a Tesco that opened in 1958.

Triangular Tower and Plume Library

All Saints' Church, existing by 1180, has the only triangular tower in England and a memorial window to George Washington, whose family had Maldon connections, unveiled in 1928. The tower of St Peter's holds the Plume Library, founded by Dr Thomas Plume in the seventeenth century, with over 8,000 books and pamphlets and among the oldest public libraries in the country.

Promenade Park and the Battle

The best walking is west and east of the water. Promenade Park, open since 1895 and the largest waterside park in Essex, runs riverside paths past a boating lake, a galleon in the play area and beach huts for hire. A mile east, the tidal causeway to Northey Island floods for up to three hours around high tide and can be crossed on foot at the right moment. It is the likely site of the Battle of Maldon in 991, where the ealdorman Byrhtnoth refused the Vikings' demand for tribute and was killed; his statue stands on the Promenade. The battle produced an Old English poem whose only manuscript burned in a house fire in 1731, surviving because someone had copied it out first.

Railheads and Taxi Day

There is no station; the branch line closed to passengers in 1966, so the nearest railheads are Witham and Hatfield Peverel, with the A414 running west to Chelmsford. Each year disabled children from London are brought here for Taxi Day, a custom since 1952, Maldon having once been described as the only town willing to help.