Stephen Nunn on the 'lost' brasses of All Saints' Church

In fact, despite a number of empty indents, there is only one survivor – a small shield of c.1480 bearing a butcher’s block brush, in what was once part of the north aisle.

So what happened to the rest?

Granted down the centuries many such brasses across the country were either re-used (known as palimpsests), stolen or melted down.

However, a document preserved in the Essex Record Office throws light on what might have happened to at least some of the “missing” brasses of All Saints'.

The notes in question state that "the black and white chess boarding, or diamond tile floor, laid in the chancel in 1870, was installed because the vicar and the churchwarden had just become Freemasons and the pavement was supposed to have some mystic signification in that direction…”.

The suggestion is also made that the flooring covered up early memorials.

Could it really be true – that as late as 1870 parts of the history of the church, maybe even brasses, were removed from sight in this way?

The vicar of All Saints' in 1870 would have been Rev Edward Russell Horwood, MA.

Born in Ashton Clinton, Buckinghamshire, in 1821, he attended Brasenose College, Oxford, and became vicar of All Saints' in 1850, serving for an incredible 51 years until his death in 1901.

Amongst other things, he was also a JP, Plume librarian, school governor and is known to have been a good all-round sportsman (including being a founder of Maldon Golf Club).

But was he a Freemason?

The Rev Horwood (Image: Stephen Nunn)

Turning to Masonic membership registers, sure enough Rev Horwood was initiated into Freemasonry on September 19, 1864, and became a member of the newly founded Lodge of St Peter (number 1,024), serving for many years as their chaplain.

The following year, on March 14, 1865, one of his churchwardens, auctioneer and one-time fire brigade superintendent George Pennington Jay, was also initiated.

The lodge presented a lectern to the church in 1866 in gratitude for being allowed to hold their meetings in the defunct tower of St Peter’s Church when they had nowhere else to go.

Then, it would seem, Rev Horwood installed the new floor in the chancel for similar meetings.

It is still there today, but what is underneath it?

Fast forward 115 years to 1985 and I was contacted by the Monumental Brass Society. They had discovered the same correspondence in the Essex Record Office and wanted to find out more.

Having obtained permission from the then vicar, Canon Arthur Dunlop, on November 17, I joined representatives of the society in undertaking a survey of the chancel.

Metal detectors were used and revealed readings underneath the tiles. The detected shapes were then marked out in chalk and were consistent in shape, size and positioning to be the lost brasses.

The next step was to try and work out who they commemorated.

Thankfully, details of the lost brasses had been jotted down by a number of antiquarians pre-1870.

All Saints' Church in Maldon (Image: Stephen Nunn)

These indicated that they were to an anonymous 15th Century civilian and his wife, with merchant’s mark and three shields, four further shields, also 15th Century, and others to Susanna Garington (died 1596, aged 33), Ralph Breeder (died 1608, aged 56) and John Amery, Gentleman, 1612, and his second wife, Dorothy.

Chancel burials were usually reserved for the “great and the good” and those named were certainly no exception.

Susanna Garington was the daughter of the Rev John Best, who was, from 1560 until his death in 1570, the Bishop of Carlisle.

She married into the Maldon branch of the Garington family, prominent landowners, bailiffs and aldermen.

Ralph Breeder was another alderman, a Puritan, a wealthy bachelor, haberdasher, landowner, local benefactor and the founder of Maldon Grammar School (which has today metamorphosed into the Plume Academy).

John Amery’s wife, Dorothy, was the daughter of Christopher Hanworth, a Protestant scholar who is known to have borrowed books from the still extant Plume Library.

We might not be able to read the inscriptions on any of their brasses today, but they are undoubtedly still there, marking those who lie in invisible peace beneath that mysterious Masonic floor.