Stephen Nunn charts history of building that housed old museum

In those days the formidable Cath Backus was in charge and the collection was housed in rooms above 71 High Street, next door to the Swan.

Access was up three steps to a front door and then via a rickety wooden staircase straight ahead.

At the top, the landing and small rooms were absolutely cram-packed with magical things - taxidermy, glinting copper and brass, antique rifles, pistols and swords, scrap books and macabre human remains, including a couple of skulls and a leathery looking, veiny hand.

I loved it all and I became great friends with Cath, who sort of took me under her wing.

Number 71 was (and still is) an integral part of the same wonderfully historic building as 69. The ground floor section of 69 (until recently Prezzo Italian restaurant) was, in the museum’s day, Matthews.

It was a well-established business, founded by James and George Matthews, listed as farm and garden seedsmen, millers, cattle, pig, poultry and dog food manufacturers, corn, forage, salt, coal and artificial manure merchants.

I recall their shop had a very distinctive, earthy smell about it and the wide timber-framed front room had huge open drums full of loose produce.

Before their time, and for over 100 years, the building had been a grocers. Alfred Quilter had a grocery business there from the 1850s to the 1870s and prior to his tenure it had been in the Bygrave family.

Grocer Joseph Bygrave and Mary his wife (died 1842) had initially leased it, but then owned it outright.

Their son, Richard, was born there in 1798 and continued living in part of the building (along with his brother) right through until 1852.

There also seems to have been secondary activity going on – John Beale had a cycle agency there during the Quilter era and cabinet maker James Beale worked alongside the Bygraves.

In fact the building’s commercial activity can be traced back to the early years of the 18th Century. It was purchased by the grocer Wall Reery from the Pond family in the 1740s.

The Ponds had owned it since the 1680s when it was two tenements known as ‘Tylers’.

That’s an awful lot of human activity for one place, but even when Gilbert Pond sold 69-71 High Street in the 1740s it was old – dating back to at least the 16th Century.

When you stand on the other side of the road and study it properly, you can still see evidence of that architectural heritage – the gabled roofs, attics with semicircular-headed windows, moulded barge-boards and surviving wide carriage-arch.

Inside, the timber-frame reveals clues to a former cross-wing that was once jettied to the front. Many of the beams have clearly been re-used and it looks like the earlier (16th Century) structure was literally enveloped into a re-modelled, high-quality town house sometime in the early to mid 17th Century.

At that stage this was probably the home of William Payne. In 1652 his tenement was described as “...a ground floor hall. A great shop and another shop new erected; and on the first floor four chambers (two of which had been recently made out of one chamber over the great shop) with a garret room above them in the roof space”.

Later on, the distinctively shaped garden to the rear had “a privy adjacent to a Hog’s Cot (a pigsty) and a wood and coal house”.

The separated section that was to become the museum had variously been a private house (Mrs Hurrell was living there 1910-1913, Frank Wilding 1929 and Ben Greenfield 1933), a dentist, an as yet unidentified private school, a builders (Joseph Dines 1894-1906), cabinet makers (Tunmer & Son 1917-1926), tailors (RJ Osborn 1937) and accountants (Gridley & White 1971).

Maldon Museum moved out of 71 at the end of the 1980s. The Powell Brothers took over from Matthews in the 1990s and ran their pet and garden supplies business from 69.

Prezzo, in turn, closed in August 2021, but the building has now entered a new chapter.

Local businessman Salman (Sammy) Barli of Sark Mediterranean Restaurant, over the road at 102, has undertaken a major restoration of 69 and turned it into Paparazzi restaurant and cocktail bar.

Time moves on, businesses come and go and 69 High Street has seen it all - seeds, grocery, dining and so much more besides.

But throughout it all the building has survived. It continues to be an important feature of our historic High Street, much admired by passers-by and, despite the passage of hundreds of years, I am sure William Payne would still recognise his old home today.