Stephen Nunn goes in search of Roman bricks in Maldon

The scene that always makes me laugh is where the leader of the People’s Front of Judea gives an impassioned speech, asking: "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The revolutionaries proceed to outline all sorts of good things – the aqueduct, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, wine and public baths.

In that same vein, I have been teaching my eldest grandson, Lucas, about the Romans in Britain. To make it fun, we have been looking at objects from my collection – mosaic tesserae, a shard of Samian pottery, coins, painted wall plaster and, of course, the ubiquitous “Roman brick”.

If there is one object that epitomises the best of “what the Romans did for us”, it has to be that brick.

At a time when buildings were made of wood and daub, the Romans introduced brick masonry and revolutionised house building.

However, following the fall of their Empire, brick-making all but disappeared until medieval times.

Roman bricks are thinner than modern ones, but came in a variety of shapes and sizes. The version generally used in lacing courses was known as a ‘Lydium’ and measured on average 405 x 280 x 40mm.

Roman buildings were constructed with thin courses of these bricks, interspersed with stonework. Two important surviving examples of this work are the Balkerne Gate and the Temple Vault beneath the castle at Colchester.

After the Romans left and their buildings fell into decay, quantities of those same bricks were re-used – highly valued in a county that has no natural building materials.

So can we find any evidence of that transition in Maldon?

In describing the remains of St Giles' Leper Hospital, in Spital Road, the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (HMSO 1921) says of its east arm that it “retains only its north wall, which has a moulded internal string-course of late 12th Century date…below this string-course is a rough relieving-arch of Roman brick, visible both inside and out and of doubtful purpose”.

It is an unusual, mysterious feature - an arch shape incorporated into a solid wall and formed entirely out of Roman bricks.

They have clearly been re-used, so where did they come from?

Although St Giles' dates from the end of the 12th Century (with early 13th Century lancet windows) nearby excavations in advance of house building in 1958/59 revealed quantities of Roman pottery.

So was there once a Roman building here?

Another place packed with Roman brick is St Mary’s Church. Again, the earliest surviving parts are 12th Century, but mixed in with all the rubble flint and ironstone are more Roman bricks.

Although ‘Hythe’ is an Anglo-Saxon word, an earlier Roman landing place has always been assumed to have been there. Not only that, but there was probably a Roman building up on the hill where St Mary’s now stands, for in 1886, when underfloor heating was being installed in the church, fragments of a Roman bowl were discovered six feet below the nave.

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More evidence perhaps of another robbed-out Roman predecessor.

Although those two sites (St Giles' and St Mary’s) are in Maldon, the main settlement during the Roman period appears to have been in Heybridge.

The parish church of St Andrew incorporates amounts of Roman brick in its fabric. Other bricks have turned up in 19th and 20th Century excavations.

In 1967, in Crescent Road, trenches revealed a brick that carried the impression of cloth that had been applied while the clay was still wet.

Another bore batch number 'CCXX' (220). Interestingly, 220 was said to have been the regular daily output of the brick-makers of Siscia (a town in today’s central Croatia).

In 1994, during the Elms Farm excavation, it was concluded that, although the “civitas” (a Romano-British small-town) was “almost exclusively built of wood, demolition rubble…..suggests the existence of a 1st Century brick-built building, perhaps a mansio (a sort of Roman Travelodge)”.

Local slaves were doubtless used to construct such buildings, albeit under the supervision of Roman builders. But where did the materials come from?

Were the bricks imported or made locally? Although no Roman brick-making sites have been discovered in this area, my friend, the late Pat Ryan (1930-2021), in her seminal two-volume work Brick in Essex (1996-99) says that they are made of “fine-particled clays”, that “two hands were needed to lift them” and that they “seem to have been dried under some form of roofing”.

It would be 1,000 years before those skills were applied again in the brickfields of Beeleigh.

Those Romans really were well ahead of their time.