Mistral. Journal of the Mersea Island Society. January 1992. Page 20.
A Glimpse of Sybil Brand by Doreen Fox.

My link with Sybil Brand is undoubtedly Yew Tree House. Within a very short time of our moving in, in June 1963, Sybil came round, introduced herself and thereafter showed enormous interest in anything going on there.

Her great grandparents - John and Lucy Pullen, her grandparents - George and Sarah Pullen and her mother, Mary Ann Pullen had all lived there. The last Pullen left in 1937. Sybil was delighted that it was to be a family home again after standing empty for two years, and although we couldn't match the Pullens we did bring five children to grow up in it.

Sybil's grandparents first lived in one of the weatherboard cottages, now 24 and 26 Coast Road. Twelve of their fifteen children were born there including Sybil's mother, Mary Ann. But soon after Mary Ann's birth, great grandfather John Pullen died and George and Sarah with their twelve children moved into the 'big house'. Mary Ann lived there until her marriage to Sybil's father John Brand in 1882.

It was John's father George Brand who built Primrose Cottage off The Square in Coast Road. However, John had built Laurel Cottage "within sight of Yew tree House" and took his bride there. Sybil and her three siblings were born there. I think Sybil was born in 1899 and at the time of her birth, older sister Daisy was 15, Leila was 11 and brother Tony was 8. They lived in Laurel Cottage for 10 more years. By this time the older children were independent and Sybil and her parents moved - by fishing smack! - to Paglesham.

When we came to Mersea Sybil and her sister Leila lived in Yorick Road. It was about this time that the Mersea Island Society came into being. Sybil contributed many articles to 'Mistral' and took an interest in the Society's yearly programmes of meetings, outings, etc.. One of the early items on the programme was a tour of well-known Mersea houses. Yew Tree House was on the list and we agreed to be last to be visited, and give the visitors tea. The Pullens were a musical family and so are the Foxes. The visitors were entertained by our son William and his friend playing their bassoons out in the garden whilst they explored the house and the out-buildings and drank their tea. Sybil brought several interesting family items including an oil painting of the house before the Elizabethan farmhouse part of it had been pulled down. She also brought an enlarged framed photograph of the huge walnut tree which had once dwarfed our barn making it look no bigger than a potting shed. At the end of the day she decided this picture could stay in Yew Tree House and it has hung in our music room ever since.

Some time later we decided to remove a 1930' s fireplace in that same room which we rightly assumed to be covering up a much older hearth. Sybil was down like a shot when I told her what we were doing. She told us that our music room had once been known as the 'school' room and one can still see in the external brickwork where the door led into it from the garden. She remembered a high hob Victorian grate built inside the original curve of the fireback. It had been decorated with 16th Century Dutch biblical tiles, all but two of which had been hacked off and left in pieces behind the modern grate. We have roughly pieced together nine of the tiles. Their Dutch references to the scenes in the Bible which they depicted enabled us to look them up and read the whole story. Sybil didn't need to look them up. She knew all the stories immediately.

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A Glimpse of Sybil Brand continued

Date: January 1992