Stephen Nunn looks at 2,000 years of glass in Maldon

It was a job that was long overdue (my wife tells me by some 30 years). Having purchased the five sheets needed, I cautiously drove home and fitted them using those awkward stainless-steel spring clip things.

Standing back and admiring the finished job, I reflected on the versatility and longevity (historical speaking that is) of glass.

Archaeological evidence suggests that glassmaking is very ancient indeed - dating back some 4,000 years and originating in the regions of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Syria.

The first glass objects appeared in this country before the Roman occupation, but largely consisted of pieces of glass-bead jewellery.

The material became much more prolific after the invasion of 43AD and has featured throughout our island’s story ever since.

During the Elms Farm excavations, in Heybridge, in the early 1990s, a pit was revealed that contained a variety of finds.

Amongst them was a strip of cut, opaque red glass.

It was possibly intended for use in the enamelling process and was datable to the mid to late-1st Century AD.

It wasn’t the only glass discovered there. In my own collection I have a small fragment of a mould-blown, square bottle, made of blue-green glass.

It has a distinctive pattern on what was the base – relief geometric basal and corner markings, that were either the trademark of the manufacturer, or of the proprietor of the contents. Experts have told me that it was made sometime between 70 to 170AD.

Moving forward in time, we have some wonderful examples of stained (or more correctly, painted) glass windows in our churches.

The canons at Beeleigh Abbey also clearly made extensive use of glass in their decorated windows. Archaeological investigations, on site from 2001 to 2006, resulted in a large collection of good quality glass fragments of red, yellow, green and blue that must have come from the destruction of the abbey in 1536.

Some of the glass unearthed at Beeleigh Abbey (Image: Maldon Archaeological and Historical Group)

Exciting discoveries like those are not just restricted to professionally organised digs. During drainage works at St Mary’s Church in 1998, a trench was dug around the base of the tower.

I kicked over the spoil and found the neck of a green glass, 17th Century, wine bottle, known as a “string ring”. It fits exactly with the date of the rebuilding of the tower – perhaps it was left behind by one of the workmen?

Amongst the many historic features at the Blue Boar, in Silver Street, are some characterful windows of so-called “bullseye glass”. In common use until the 19th Century, the bullseye was the centre piece of mouth-blown panes – the flat outer edges were cut for the more wealthy customers, the left over pontil went to less fussy buyers, or for more public buildings.

Bullseye glass windows at the Blue Boar (Image: Stephen Nunn)

The Blue Boar examples might well be later “copies” (of the 1920s), but this type of window was certainly fitted in Maldon properties during the 18th Century by known local glaziers, including James Peck and Thomas Limner.

The construction of Maldon’s railway, particularly its extension to the viaduct of 1889, necessitated the construction of embankments.

These were built up using tons of rubbish from London dustbins, which included thousands of broken and complete bottles.

I was part of a veritable army of youngsters who, throughout the early 1970s dug them up and I can still recall the thrill of uncovering complete Victorian marble bottles.

As well as bottles, glass has always been the favoured material for drinking vessels. Maldon’s pubs, past and present (the Blue Boar amongst them), have relied on them for their trade, but then so have our restaurants.

That was also the case throughout the war years and I am the proud owner of some of the items used in the dining rooms at nearby RAF Bradwell Bay – a large tea mug, a couple of spoons, but best of all, an engraved sherry glass of a type to be seen in the officers’ mess.

So there you have it, a history that ranges from Roman invaders to RAF pilots, 2,000 years of the local use of glass and a story inspired by our broken greenhouse!