The late East Anglian author, James Wentworth Day, once wrote: “If I were to take an American by the hand and lead him to a town which epitomised the history of England, I would take him to Maldon.”

I could narrow it down even further for, apart from the classic view of the Hythe, barges and St Mary’s and the outlying remains of Beeleigh Abbey and St Giles Leper Hospital, I would take them to the top end of our High Street.

Indeed, I have done just that and not only with Americans but all nationalities (Europeans, Australians and Japanese among them). That unique combination of the Moot Hall, All Saints’ Church, water trough, White Horse pub, King’s Head centre and all the linked, uneven roof lines, make this a very special spot indeed.

However, just a short walk off the beaten track reveals a real hidden gem.

Passing alongside the Oak House, down Church Walk, which intersects All Saints’ churchyard, a wide vista ahead centres on a timber-framed beauty – the Vicarage.

It often takes visitors’ breath away as it is so unexpected – impactful and yet somehow humble at the same time, with the patina of centuries of evolution.

I first went inside when railway fanatic Reverend Irons lived there and have been fascinated by it ever since.

However, that was in the late 1960s and the building is certainly older than that – much older.

To understand its story we must travel back in time another 500 or so years to the mid-15th century and return to the previously mentioned Moot Hall.

The Moot Hall, formerly D’Arcy’s Tower, was then the new brick townhouse of Maldon’s MP, Sir Robert D’Arcy, and his wife, Alice Fitz- Langley.

There is no doubt that Sir Robert was a powerful man, one time Escheator of Essex, Sheriff of the County, Bailiff of the Rochford Hundred and MP for our town and then for all of Essex in seven successive Parliaments between 1416 and 1446. However, towards the end of his life he clearly reflected on where he might be going and how long it might take him to get there.

As a result he had the south, or D’Arcy, chapel added to All Saints’ Church as a sort of heavenly time-machine, an active mausoleum where two priests could pray for the repose of his soul and those of his ancestors and descendants, hoping to help minimise their time in the intermediate state of purgatory.

When not busy in prayer, those priests needed somewhere to live and in his will (proven in 1448) Sir Robert made provision for “a messuage (a dwelling house) and a garden and an acre of land for the two chaplains of Darcyeschauntery”.

In reality the messuage in question either incorporated or largely replaced an existing priest’s house of up to 100 years earlier - say around 1350 - but we know next to nothing about this earlier structure.

However, D’Arcy’s ancient lodgings form the core, western part, of today’s vicarage, which was originally a single-storied, central hall house with jettied cross wings at either end.

And so it remained until a substantial rebuild on the eve of the upheaval that was the English Civil War.

Around 1638 an addition was made to the old eastern cross wing, there were alterations to the north and south fronts and the central roof was raised to the level of the gable ends.

Further work might have carried on from then through to the 1670s. Other minor changes followed and land terriers of 1818 and 1887 describe it as having “all modern conveniences, including a dwelling house, coach house, stable, saddle house, court yard, stable yard and garden”.

An extensive restoration programme of the early 1900s focused on the south front and the now familiar and distinctive timber-framing was exposed in 1902.

Despite all of that work, thankfully many of the features of Darcyeschauntery house survive to this day.

Internally, among 17th-century aspects – panels, a fireplace, moulded jambs and balusters, and painted and dated initials ‘RMA 1638’ – there is an early 15th-century partition in the west room and some impressive painted decorations of bands, trefoils and the Christogram ‘IHC’, like IHS denoting the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus, circa 1500.

The custodians of all of that impressive history have been (and thankfully continue to be) successive generations of clergy and their families and we know their names, from the D’Arcy priests of the 1440s, their contemporary vicar Will Reder (1446-1458), Will Walton (1524-1541) who lived through the first bite of the Reformation, Israel Hewitt (1620-1650) in the pulpit during the troubled times of the Great Rebellion, the Georgian clergymen (one of whom lived at the Friary, allowing his curate free run of the vicarage), amateur historian and Freemason Leonard Hughes (1903-1917), Isaac Seymour (1917-1947) who preached through two world wars, dear old Derek Irons (1953-1972), to my friend Nick’s dad, Arthur Dunlop (1972-1993).

When I used to visit Nick at home at that stage, there was always talk of a secret tunnel somewhere beneath the floor of the western part and the nearby church.

Needless to say, we never found anything.

Then there was Peter Mason (1993-2001) and fellow Air Training Corps supporter David Atkins (2001-2009).

Since 2009 it has been Canon Stephen Carter – well loved by his parishioners and the wider Maldon community as a kind and caring man of God.

We should never underestimate how difficult it can be to live in a listed building and I am sure Stephen and Sue Carter and their family would have something to say about keeping it warm in the winter months, but what a house - Darcyeschauntery house, a place that in Wentworth Day’s prose has “gained light, life and colour over the succeeding centuries”.

One might change ‘centuries’ to read a staggering half a millennia and still serving its original time-honoured purpose.