APART from a brief sojourn to Church Street, I have lived in Fambridge Road all my life – growing up with my parents at number 204 and then in our marital home at 138.

I don’t know about you, but as I get older (and particularly given the times we find ourselves currently living through) I increasingly reflect on my childhood. In the 1960s the lower part of Fambridge Road still had a very rural feel about it.

The Poets Estate didn’t exist – it was a private orchard and farmlands run by the Co-op and part of our illicit playground.

Separate areas of Maldon like ours all had their own communities where families knew each other and children formed close friendships.

My mates included the Whitleys (who had a fruit and veg business on Cross Road) and the Roots (who lived in a large house on what was Nightingale Corner) and in our early years (and as long as I had been good) we were allowed quite a bit of free rein.

I particularly remember going pond dipping (or at least a stream version) in the Lime Brook. Armed with string-handled jam jar and a landing net on a bamboo cane, I would set off on a journey that seemed to me to go on for miles but was, in reality, only about 530 yards!

Leaving number 204 and passing by Volwycke Avenue, the straight road eventually bends to the right and on the opposite corner was Carr’s Farm where dad and I once had horse-riding lessons.

I don’t think I properly realised it at the time, but at that point I was walking into a truly magical, historic landscape.

The small, early-19th Century, red-brick farmhouse then owned by Farmer Carr and his family was (and still is) actually known as ‘Seeley House’.

This was formerly ‘Silly House’ and although some favour 'house among the willows', it is more likely a corruption of the Old-English 'sælig', meaning 'blessed' – a possible clue to a lost holy site that could have been an outlier of Beeleigh Abbey.

Harwich and Manningtree Standard:

  • The early-19th Century farmhouse known as ‘Seeley House’

Some of the internal timbers certainly pre-date its official listing by many centuries (not least a distinctive beam in the cellar that looks like the front bressumer of a jettied house) and a small pointed window to the rear, thought to be monastic in origin.

Continuing on my journey, I soon arrived at the flat and white-fenced road bridge over the Lime Brook, where I whiled away many happy hours catching newts (which would not be allowed today).

Even the Lime Brook is ancient and is referred to as 'Lymborne brooke' in those same Beeleigh Abbey annals of 1488.

This is taken from a combination of 'lind' for 'lime tree' and 'burna' for 'brook' – so the Lime Tree Brook – and is even mentioned as a boundary marker in the Borough Charter of 1171.

When not troubling newts in the Lime Brook, my contemporaries and I would follow a footpath around a field that is today Lambourne Grove.

This led to a wooded area known as ‘The Wick’ – a great place for tree-climbing, splashing about in the boggy ground and generally making mischief with ropes and old bits of timber.

I recall the remains of greenhouses there, of the brick foundations and broken glass frames from a former nursery-cum-market garden managed by Holloway and Bishop.

The use of the word Wick indicates a trading centre for salt production or, as is more likely in this case, a dairy farm.

Recent studies have suggested that in the compound 'wicham' there could be a direct connection with Roman settlements and, by coincidence, Roman remains were found nearby when the aptly named Limebrook Way (B1018) section of our bypass was under construction.

Many locals still know this area and particularly the A414 stretch of Spital Road past Morrisons (Wycke Hill) as The Wick (and some can even pronounce it properly!)

We also have ‘The Wick’ nature reserve along the route of the former Maldon to Woodham Ferrers railway line.

This 6.1-hectare site is managed by Essex Wildlife Trust and is rich in flora and fauna.

A visit during the spring and summer promises a wonderful array of butterflies, birds, dragonflies, flowering plants and even glow-worms.

It’s a special oasis in an area now dominated by housing and traffic, and somewhere that my wife and I enjoy visiting.

Harwich and Manningtree Standard:

  • The bridge over the Lime Brook

We tend to walk there and as we pick up the route past number 204 I am transported into an earlier age – not just of my youth but of a hidden Maldon.

In my mind at least, Milton Road is the entrance to an orchard, Lamborne Grove a footpath to The Wick, Seeley House is Carr’s Farm and much more besides, the bridge still passes over the Lime Brook, and the bypass path gives convenient access to the railway line and that rich reserve.

Some of this is an imagined past, but some of it is thankfully a surviving reality just waiting to be explored.