Mersea Island Museum - Exhibitions

EXHIBITIONS

2010 at Mersea Museum

Resource Centre

A significant extension to the museum. Browse the Museum's digital collection of photographs, oral history and film.
13,000 images, 200 hours of audio and oral history.

Click extension to see more about the building of the Resource Centre.

Exhibitions - 'Odd' Objects

The ENDEAVOUR tow rope

Our object in the BBC History of the World project is a pieces of the tow rope that broke in the Atlantic in 1937, leaving the yacht to sail back to England. She had a crew with several local people on board, with Captain Ted Heard from Tollesbury, and was missing for several days.
Photographs of ENDEAVOUR and newspaper cuttings from the time.

Farming

Horse overshoes, sickle, flail, hay cutter, shepherd's crook...

Mersea Businesses

Book keeping machine, Telephone Exchange Subscriber's Line Unit, Cash Register, Magnetic Card Machine, cheque making machine...

The Parish Church

16th Century Chest, old clock face, chancel gates, lantern...

World War 2

Spitfire model, gas mask, ARP hat, wartime books, machine gun, incendiaries, uniform...

Medical

Heart massager, dentist's drill, other mysterious instruments.

Audio Visual slideshow

A new slideshow for 2010 - "Then and Now". Old photographs of Mersea and the same scene in 2009.

Underwood's bus fleet the day before it was taken over by Eastern National

Queen's Corner - from Then and Now slide show

West Mersea Parish Church in the days it was lit by oil lamps

Mersea's 1944 NFS Fire Engine outside the Melrose Road Fire Station

Natural History

Birds of the Sea Shore at Mersea Local land and sea birds in a typical Essex saltings setting are displayed. A good pre-war collection of birds eggs, a comprehensive collection of butterflies and a fossil collection are normally on show. Whale bones discovered 2008 off Cobmarsh Island. Believed to be 200 years old

Family History

We have copies of parish records and other information and so are able to answer many family history queries. Family trees have been built for several well-known Mersea families.

Photographic Collection

The Museum has over 12,000 historic photographs which can be displayed on a computer in the Resource Centre. The collection covers Mersea and the surrounding area, local people, fishing, oystering, shipping, barges, smacks, farming yachting and more. Most of the photographs in the John Leather Memorial Collection have now been digitised and can be viewed.
An audio-visual slide show on Mersea runs in the main museum and other themed slideshows can be run in the Resource Centre. Charabanc crossing Mersea Strood. You may still have to wait for the tide to visit the Island