4

I recently spotted online that the dog supplies store was celebrating a 4th anniversary and decided it would be my blip for today for no other reason.

In checking the street number I spotted a recent  article about the cake shop 'annies' and the building.....

'In common with many other older buildings in Maldon High Street, number 121 was originally part of a single, much larger, timber-framed hall house.

Based on fragmentary surviving architectural evidence, that former hall house would have been constructed some time during the late-15th Century as part of a mediaeval housing development, on land situated between Butt Lane and open pasture, with Burgess Mead to the rear and Jacob’s Cross at the front.

All these centuries on, the house has since been divided into three commercial premises – numbers 117 to 121.

Nowadays number 117 is Amy’s Nails, but it was originally the single-bay service end of the hall, containing two rooms - the buttery, used to store drink and the pantry.

The larger, double-bay central structure, now number 119, Woof & Co, was once the main hall with an open hearth in the middle, its smoke rising to a vent in the roof.

So what about 121 – what was that used for? Based on the standard layout of these hall houses, that part would have been the parlour, a private living space with an upper floor known as a solar.

The vast majority of the hall houses that have survived have changed significantly over the centuries – extended to follow the fashion of the time, hidden behind different façades and smudged by internal alterations.

There is evidence of these changes at numbers 117, 119 and 121, including a17th Century outhouse at the back and a later frontage. Further alterations were made in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, until we end up with the three separate shops of today.

We know that some of that separation had taken place as early as 1790, as a Jewish businessman, called Joel Myers (1759-1836), had his home and his shoemakers business in numbers 117 and 119 from that date up until his death.

That shoemaking link continued right into the 19th Century with the first definite mention of number 121 as a stand-alone shop.

He appears there in the 1881 census - a 33-year-old “shoemaker employing one hand (worker)”, living and working out of 121 along with wife Elizabeth (aged 35), sons Herbert (seven) and Frederick (four), and daughters Louisa (six) and Ada (two).

John and Elizabeth Stratford are still there in 1891, but their children are listed as Herbert (17), Ernest (nine), William (seven), Edwin (five), Ada (12) and Bertha (three).

Likewise, parents and five of the children (Herbert, Ernest, William, Edwin and Bertha) appear in the 1901 return, albeit John’s occupation is now given as a "leathercutter".

By 1911, “boot repairer” John Elizabeth, Herbert, Edwin and Bertha had moved to 77 Tenterfield Road. However, son Ernest continued at 121 High Street, a “boot repairer” in his own right...

After all those years as a shoe repairers, a new lease of life and a change of use at 121 came about in the form of a succession of opticians.

Initially this was LW Loveday, with the flat upstairs occupied by an ML Jackman. The opticians then became WG Ballentyne"


Feeling worn out today.  Poor diet and sleep and a lack of exercise are not helping me.