WHENEVER anyone mentions Gate Street, I think of three things – the historic surroundings of the Carpenters Arms (at number 33) where I learned to drink in the 1970s, the terrace house at number 6 where some of my ancestors were living in 1901 and the dairyman Henry Hutson (at number 29) who features in the story of the town’s Zeppelin raid of 1915 (or at least his speckled hen does).

In some ways Henry Hutson’s occupation of the street represented a very ancient continuity. He would have kept his cows on a smallholding behind his house, the self same arrangement that had been a feature of the street from at least the mid 15th Century.

At that stage it was nothing more than a pastureland track-way which gave access to the main market place (outside All Saints' Church).

The regular flow of cattle driven along its length between the fields and the market, caused it to be “miry” in nature and gave it its original name – Sligges (or Skikes) Lane, a corruption of Slough (an area of soft, muddy ground) – a word used as early as the 12th Century.

Over time that far from attractive title changed to Gate Street, after a physical gate that was at the junction with today’s Beeleigh Road/Silver Street.

In the 16th Century this was known as St Helen’s Gate, a barrier which prevented the cattle straying towards Holy St Helen’s Lane (today’s Cromwell Hill) where St Helen’s Chapel was located (now the site of the Masonic Hall).

Just inside the gate was (and still is) a timber-framed, open hall house, dating back to the 1340s.

By the late 17th Century it formed part of an orchard small-holding called variously Pyersman Place and Drakes.

In 1847 the building was purchased by brewer John Pitcairn, who considerably altered it and turned it into the Carpenters Arms.

It was, in effect, his brewery tap and Pitcairn’s business was eventually acquired by Gray & Son of Chelmsford, who continued to brew in Gate Street until 1952.

There is a lot of history at the Carpenters. Legend has it that it was where the men who built the nearby Blue Boar lodged in 1350 and it has a long roll call of larger-than-life landlords (including, from the 1870s to 1908, the Meads).

But, I am reminded, there is a lot more to Gate Street than just beer.

From its medieval pasture roots it evolved to include, during the 18th Century, orchards and market gardens and as well as the Carpenters building, other properties slowly began to be constructed – 27 and 29 (1750s and Grade II listed), 1 to 3 (now Kew Law, but developed as a solicitors in the 1840s) and barns and outbuildings backing on to shops at the top end of High Street.

Clacton and Frinton Gazette:

  • Gate Street in the snow. Picture by Jon Yuill

Further development occurred throughout Victoria’s reign. The pair of mid-19th Century cottages at 7 and 9 (now Grade II listed), 11 and 13 and the terrace of seven homes from number 4 to number 16, on the corner of Coach Lane, as well, of course, as the brewery site itself (now occupied by Gate Street Mews).

Until the 1930s, agricultural implement manufacturers Bentall’s owned numbers 4 to 14 and used them as staff houses.

The census returns give us an insight into those and other past residents. The 1901 return, for example, reveals a coalman and his family at number 4, my ancestors (the Lasts) were at 6, an iron-moulder was at 8, a groom at 10, a foundry painter at 12, a baker at 14 and the Harveys lived at 16 (considered elderly in their 60s).

Over the road there was a groom at now lost number 5, a dressmaker and a housekeeper at 7 and 9, a corn dealer’s assistant and a retired ironmonger at 11 and 13 and others living in long gone numbers 15 to 23, including the brewer, Walter Gray, and his housekeeper at 19.

There was another housekeeper at 27 and, as we know, Henry Hutson was at 29. It was here, during the night of Thursday, April 15, 1915, that the only fatality of the Maldon Zeppelin raid occurred.

Clacton and Frinton Gazette:

  • Victorian additions to the street

Despite all the damage across town (not least in Spital Road), the press (in true propaganda style) had a field day by declaring that “a chicken was killed outright”.

It was, in truth, the speckled hen belonging to Henry Hutson and it met its fate in the yard at 29 Gate Street.

There was another building at 31 and the Meads were running the Carpenters at 33.

That little alehouse has served generations of Gate Street residents, including Ted Last from number 6 who went on to be killed in Arras in 1918, and a certain Fambridge Road teenager who was weaned on a Green King concoction of 'Bob and Abbot'.

I am not sure I ever saw Moreland’s Old Speckled Hen for sale there, but wouldn’t that have been ironic?

Mind you, that beer is nothing to do with the bird – it is from a nickname given to a paint splattered MG car – 'Owld Speckled 'Un'.

Talking of which, in 1911 JE Freeman (of what was then Crick and Freeman at 1-3) submitted a building plan to the borough council for a “motor house”.

The modern age had arrived.