WHEN we first moved into our house in 1991, the neighbours on one side were, to say the least, in their “golden years”.

They were lovely and became like surrogate grandparents to us.

They both lived to a ripe old age – Arthur was 104 when he eventually died and Connie 99. They had been married since 1926.

One of the most fun things was talking to them about local history – although they didn’t see it as history as such.

Arthur, having been born in Maldon in 1902, spoke to us about his childhood as if we had been there too.

Much to my amusement (and her annoyance), he often asked my wife what it was like in Yorkshire during the war (we assumed he meant the Second World War, but you never know!)

He spoke of an Edwardian Maldon that is lost to us now and of larger-than-life characters who ran the town and were key to its economy.

Among them was an individual who Arthur referred to as Elsey Bland.

I had never heard of him and the only other clue that he gave was that he once lived at the Friary.

It’s an unusual name so I consulted sale particulars at the Essex Record Office and, sure enough, a Thomas Bland purchased the eastern of the Friary houses from H Sprague on September 25, 1874.

The H Sprague in question was Henry Sprague, who was a wine merchant and used the building as a vault and retail unit for his wines and spirits.

Based on a later advert, it would appear that Thomas Elsey Bland followed the same business, in the same building.

Born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, in 1841 and educated in Heidelburg, Germany, Elsey Bland was living in Islington at the time of the 1871 census and was a “clerk to a colonial broker”.

However, by 1881 he is shown as being in residence at the Friary, along with his wife Theresa (six years his junior and whom he had married in 1868), their (at that stage) three young children (eventually there would be five), a cook, housemaid and a nurse.

It is still shown as the Blands’ family home (and business) in 1891, 1901 and in 1911 – well within the memory of Arthur.

In fact, that part of the Friary was not sold again until Elsey Bland’s death in 1921.

I already knew that there were extensive cellars under both the Friary buildings as I had previously explored them.

Those under Friary east are much smaller than west and so to compensate, a single-storey outbuilding was constructed in the stable yard with an additional 70ft-long vaulted cellar beneath it.

This originally had steps and large trapdoors and the side walls were (and as far as I know still are) divided off by iron grills to create numbered bins.

Elsey Bland’s business was clearly a big affair and it flourished.

He advertised a wide range of drinks – vintage port, old bottled sherry, claret, Burgundy, sparkling and still hocks, Champagnes, brandy, whisky (both Scotch and Irish), rum, gin, as well as ales and stouts and mineral waters.

With good business came recognition and extensive involvement in local affairs.

Elsey Bland became a JP (he was chair of the bench, in fact), a county councillor, chairman of both the Maldon Burial Board and the Maldon Gas Company, a governor at Maldon Grammar School, director of the Maldon Iron Works, chairman of the Public Hall Company, a churchwarden at All Saints’, a patron of the arts (particularly of the artist Robert Nightingale) and a staunch member of the Conservative party.

As well as all that, he managed to fit in the odd round at Maldon Golf Club (of which he was a founder member and treasurer).

It is little wonder that Thomas Elsey Bland was well-known, including by dear old Arthur and his family, but to have spoken to someone who actually remembered him first-hand was, I now feel on reflection, a pretty special experience.

It was literally living history.

A few years after Arthur’s death, my wife and I were on one of our regular forays around an antique centre when I did a double take. There on the floor in the corner of one of the units was a stone jar.

You know the sort of thing, a Doulton made brown and white glazed container for the storage of fluids.

Common enough, but it was the inscription on the shoulder that I found particularly important – “T Elsey Bland. Wine & Spirit Merchant, Maldon”.

We, of course, bought it and, although my wife moans that it is yet another thing to gather dust, secretly, like me, I am sure she sees it as a tangible connection with our much-missed neighbour and his childhood memories of a long gone Maldon businessman.