The Move to Maldon

With the arrival of David, it became increasingly evident that 10 Fountain Lane was too small, so we began looking around for a larger house. By this time - 1980 - our friends John and Marion were living in Maldon, a town which we had increasingly come to like, so we asked them to keep an eye open for houses coming on to the market which might suit us.

John had a contact in an estate agent and it was through him that we had the chance to view a house which was about to come on to the market.

When we first viewed 4 Lodge Road, I don't think we believed we could afford it. It was a three-storey red-brick semi-detached house built around 1898 and, compared to 10 Fountain Lane, looked huge.

It had five bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor, and a large room on the top floor, a dining room at the front and a sitting room at the back, and a lovely enclosed private back garden. The only area which needed work was the little warren of rooms which comprised the kitchen, breakfast room and store room.

At the side of the house was a carport, with a garage behind it. The back steps from the kitchen led out into an enclosed paved yard which had a store room and coal shed. To reach the garden from the yard one had to go through the garage but the hall passageway also had a back door which led straight into the garden.

The hall was quarry tiled, and there were fireplaces with marble surrounds in both the dining room and sitting room. A good-sized bathroom served the bedrooms on the first floor, and there was a downstairs toilet by the back door.

Lodge Road was an unmade road off London Road, on the west side of the town, and looked out, from the top-floor windows, to miles of open countryside up the Blackwater River valley. The High Street, with a good selection of shops, was five minutes' walk away, and there was....

....a footpath from the north end of Lodge Road which led into open countryside and beyond to Beeleigh Abbey and Beeleigh Wier. The bypass, built later, followed the line of the old railway - its destroyed bridge is seen in this picture.

We need someone to survey the house and advise us whether it had any major structural problems. George, seen here with his wife Tania, worked for a London borough upgrading houses of exactly this age, and he took a look at it. In his opinion, the only thing that needed doing was some strengthening of the supports of the heavy, tiled roof, a relatively cheap job which he offered to do.

It was such a lovely house that we scraped together every bean we had and could borrow, and managed to buy it. For the next year or so we lived like church mice but it was worth it: 4 Lodge Road was a gem of a house in a lovely Essex market town with good schools and a friendly community. We couldn't have made a better move.