You’ve doubtless heard of an 'upside down house', the sort that has bedrooms on the ground floor, with living accommodation above, but how about a 'back to front' one?
According to the National Heritage List for England, that is exactly what we have at 8-10 Silver Street.
Nowadays we know the building as Maldon Court School, but the official listing suggests it started life as a house of the “early to mid 19th Century” and that the rear, with its attractive central door-case, semi-circular sash and balanced pair of bays, was “probably the original front elevation”.
An examination of the 1848 Tithe Award confirms that to have been the case.
The house is shown on the corner of Cromwell Hill, with its back stretching along Silver Street, a yard to the opposite side and its ornate frontage overlooking an extensive “plantation and lawn”, a “garden” and another “building and yard” at the lower end.
It was accessed through main gates on to a carriage driveway that lead to the front door. The coach house (the current building used for forms 1, 2 and 3) housed a coach and presumably the horse with the loft above for the hay.
The key to the award reveals the estate was owned and occupied by George Wyatt Digby. It was then known as Cromwell Hall, partly serving as a community assembly hall, but mainly as the residence of the Maldon solicitor and one-time town clerk.
He appears there in the 1851 census, along with first wife Hannah, five of their children and two servants.
They are still there in 1861, but in 1869 Hannah Digby died.
George Wyatt Digby then re-married and went to live for a short time in London. In his stead at Cromwell Hall came his eldest son, George Edward Digby, also a solicitor and town clerk.
George Edward Digby was living there by 1871 with wife Maria, three sons and three servants.
In 1877, following a protracted illness, George Edward Digby died, at the untimely age of 47.
The funeral was a large affair, the cortege, in solemn procession, starting at the hall.
Then, in 1886, George Wyatt Digby also died, not here in Maldon, but in America.
In 1889, the house had a new name and owner. Now known as Maldon Court, it became the home of 57-year-old widow Mary Marchant Wickham.
The 1891 census shows her there with her two sons, Lionel and Herbert, along with one servant.
Herbert was another solicitor and his mother transferred ownership to him, but he was declared bankrupt in 1896.
The property was sold to Herman Alexander Krohn. Born in Cape Colony in 1850, Krohn was a JP, Deputy Lieutenant, Master of Maldon’s St Peter’s Lodge of Freemasons, the director of an explosives company, councillor and seven times mayor of Maldon.
He lived at Maldon Court with his wife Alice (of New South Wales), their two daughters (both born in India) and servants.
He appears in both the 1901 and 1911 census returns and, despite his suspiciously German-sounding name (it originates from the Schleswig-Holstein region) worked tirelessly on the Home Front throughout the Great War.
In 1921, after it was all over, he gave up his residence and “went for a long tour on the continent”.
He sold Maldon Court to a doctor, Henry Reynolds Brown MD, and so began a period with the building doubling as a home and a surgery.
Other doctors followed – Mervyn Falkner MD and Dr James Leslie Ruthven Philip.
The 1939 register lists Dr Philip, wife Nellie (another medical practitioner) a servant and one other doctor there.
Dr Philip sold up in 1949 and Maldon Court was then owned by London architect Douglas Burrell, who divided the building into Little Court (number 8) and what would become (in 1956) Maldon Court Preparatory School (number 10).
The school was founded by Miss Carter and Mrs Robinson and they sold it to Tony and Ann Sutton in 1972.
In the intervening years, number 8 was owned by Denis Micklewright, but that too was acquired by the Suttons in 1977.
Loraine Coyle (now Guest) and Steve Guest bought the school in 2004 and then number 8 in 2010.
Loraine had been the headteacher since 2002, but handed the reins over to her daughter, Elaine Mason, in 2013.
Steve and Loraine Guest continue to live on site and, as well as being the justifiably proud owners of one the county’s foremost private preparatory schools, they are the latest residents of Maldon’s fascinating and historic 'back to front' house.
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