THIS autumn marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage – and celebrations both here and across the pond are set to take place.

On board the historic ship, along with his wife, son and servant, was Christopher Martin.

Martin was the ship’s victualler and tasked with procuring the food, drink and supplies that the 100 plus pilgrims would need for the 66 -day journey to the New World.

Martin is a man we have come to celebrate in south Essex, with a road named in his honour in Basildon.

Unfortunately he is probably not so deserving of his historic hero status.

Records tells us he was something of a brute. He was a merchant by trade and was sued at least once by a fellow merchant.

Once he was employed as the Mayflower victualler he misspent funds and refused to produce his accounts when questioned.

He was also known for insulting other passengers and in general, for bullish behaviour.

Martin has long been associated with Chantry House in High Street, Billericay. He is believed to have lived in the timber-framed building as a tenant in 1620, shortly before the Mayflower journey.

Legend has it that on the the eve of setting off for Plymouth to board the ship, several puritan passengers from Great Burstead and Billericay met inside the house for a meal.

In 1926 Chantry House (today where Slipped Discs and the Kosthuree takeaway are located) was put up for auction. It was advertised as having 12 rooms, all containing their original oak beams and panelling and even the same ‘praying windows’ from when the home was used as an earlier priests house. .

The sale attracted a lot of local attention but when it turned out a rich oil magnate from America had snapped it up for £10,000 and intended to dismantle the house, beam by beam, ship it to Boston then re-erect it once again, the story went global.

Newspapers across the nation and the world covered the story that America was to get ‘yet another historic English mansion’.

“The house will be moved to Boston where the Pilgrim Father’s landed and re-erected there,” reports revealed.

The news reached the ears of top barrister and Labour politician Sir Henry Slesser. He was already outraged by a number of high profile British homes and paintings being sold off to American collectors.

So he brought the issue up in the parliament, sighting Chantry House in Billericay as the latest victim. The end result was the approval of the ‘Works of Art and Antiquities Bill’ which prohibited the removal of treasures to other countries.

Whether this was what stopped the move of Chantry House in the end is not clear. But something definitely put the breaks on the building’s removal.

In July of 1926- a month after news of the move to Boston- Chantry House was sold again. This time to a solicitor from Chelmsford for £850 who had no plans to move it anywhere. So the house was saved. And for generations since Mayflower history enthusiasts and American tourists have flocked to Billericay to see the house.

As for Christopher Martin. He, along with his wife Mary Prowe, her son Solomon Prowe and Martin’s teenage servant John Langmore all survived the perilous journey to the New World.

Upon arrival at Cape Cod, Christopher Martin was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact- (a set of rules for the pilgrims to govern their new colony). All four of them, however, perished during the first deathly harsh winter in their new homeland.