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Publications
The following books have been published by Mersea Island Museum or are
available in the Museum Shop.
They can be purchased in the Museum or can be supplied by Mail.
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Not Just a Name
Mersea Island's Fallen of the First World War
Roger Bullen
Not Just a Name describes the background and service histories
of the fifty men from Mersea Island who made the supreme
sacrifice for their King and Country. This is the first time
their story has been told, making extensive use of Battalion
War Diaries, Trench maps, Admiralty archives and relatives recollections.
Format: A4 (297 x 210), 224 pages with many illustrations.
Paperback with 4 colour cover
ISBN No: 0-9537322-1-5
Price: £7.50 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Museum.
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Fid Harnack
RSMA
By Sheila Carter and John Leather
Articles and pictures compiled by Mersea Museum
Fid Harnack was a well-known marine artist, who lived most of his
life on Mersea.
His paintings are classics of the coast in all its moods and attract
an international clientelle.
Frederick B. Harnack was born London 1897 and died West Mersea 1983.
Published 2008.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 16 pages with photographs and copies of paintings.
Paperback
Price: £5.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Museum.
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SEAHORSE
History and recollections compiled by Mersea Museum
SEAHORSE as a houseboat was a prominent feature of Coast Road in Mersea
for many years.
She was built at Southampton in 1891, starting her life as a
gentleman's steam and came to Mersea in the 1930s.
She was broken up in 2005.
Originally published as an A4 booklet in 2005.
This edition includes more of her history and has photographs of her
being broken up and replaced by SELBY LINDA.
This edition published 2008.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 32 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £5.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Museum.
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A BOYHOOD IN MERSEA
By Archie Smith
A Mersea Island Museum Trust Publication
Archie Smith was born in 1917 and raised in West Mersea after the
Great War of 1914-18 when the country was being subjected to huge changes.
With the increase in motorised transport on land and sea, hisome of
generation witnessed the end of a very different way of life.
His boyhood memories of daily life and local characters recapture
the atmosphere of early village life on Mersea Island.
Archie Smith was also a West Mersea coucillor for many years and was the
first Mayor after the local government reorganisation in 1974.
First published 1980.
This revised and extended edition published 2008.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 48 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £5.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Museum.
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Old Spiery - Mersea's Fighting Parson
By Mary R Stevens
A Mersea Island Museum Trust Publication
The Reverend Charles Pierrepont Edwards M.C. was Vicar of West Mersea
1898 to 1946.
He was known as 'Old Spiery' and he blessed Mersea with his humour, kindness
and energy, but most of all with his abounding love.
He lived amongst the Mersea folk for almost half a century, caring for them
and sharing their joys and sorrows.
The start of World War I saw Old Spiery leaving Mersea to become a
chaplain in the Army.
He went to Gallipoli, where he was awarded the Military Cross for his efforts
in rescuing the wounded.
First published 1983.
This revised and extended edition published 2009.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 44 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £5.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Museum.
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Black Swan
Schoolboy memories of messing about in an old sailing punt
By John Rowley Skipper/Owner
A Mersea Island Museum Trust Publication
John Rowley was born in St Peter's Road, West Mersea in the mid
1930s and was introduced to mud and water at the Monkey Steps
beach. Later his playgrounds with his pals were Coast Road Hill, Hove
Creek, the main Hard and Cock's marshes.
At weekends and holidays he worked on the smacks Waterlily
little Mary and Mersea Lass, sometimes for pleasure,
sometimes for pocket money, with many ebbing trips to East Mersea.
His Black Swan is well remembered and later he raced
Atlanta in the Dabchicks.
First published 1996 by John Rowley.
This edition published 2009 by Mersea Island Museum Trust.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 24 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £5.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Museum.
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Barges, Canals and the Basin
Memories from Frank Thompson
A Mersea Island Museum Trust Publication
Frank comes from a Heybridge Basin family - a grandfather kept
the Jolly Sailor and like his mother, he was christened in the Jolly Sailor.
The articles in the book all have a connection to the Basin.
- Cannibal Island - the story of a village.
- On barging, the canal and its horses.
Idyllic summer days on the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation
- Rowing from Chelmsford to Heybridge Basin - by Don Rainbird.
- Regatta Days of long ago at Heybridge Basin.
- To Salcott for a Stack - barging with Jack Spitty.
- The barge UNITY of 1885 - her remains are still to be found in
Sampson's Creek.
- A Knotty problem from Frank - Who was Matthew Walker?
Published by Mersea Island Museum Trust 2009.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 36 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £5.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Museum.
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Sailormen
More barging memories and yarns from Frank Thompson
A Mersea Island Museum Trust Publication
Frank left school during the 1930s depression and worked in the City,
but whenever he could, he escaped back to Heybridge Basin.
After war time naval service he at last moved back to the Blackwater,
spending his holidays as third hand in trade under sail and in barge racing
crews.
He obtained a bargemaster's ticket from the Board of Trade.
Frank moved on to acquire new skills, working for his pal Jimmy Lawrence,
the bargemaster and sailmaker.
Frank recounts some of the adventures during his time working
on Thames Sailing Barges, trips, places, disasters and the characters.
- Barging Memories
- Forty Three Standards for Colchester
- The Grain Trade
- Racing Sailormen
- The Living Hythe in pre-war days
- A Knotty Story
Published by Mersea Island Museum Trust 2009.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 48 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £5.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Museum.
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Anglo-Saxon Island
Mersea in the first Millennium
By Sue Howlett
Mersea Island has an Anglo-Saxon name, an Anglo-Saxon causeway and an Anglo-Saxon church.
It is named in documents from the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries
and, in the final years of Anglo-Saxon England, had a population of around 500.
And yet, although there are many remains left by the Romans who settled on
Mersea many centuries earlier, few traces have been found of the Anglo-Saxons who lived,
died and worked on the island during the six centuries before 1066.
This booklet considers the intriguing jigsaw-pieces of surviving evidence.
Sadly, these are too few to construct a complete picture of Anglo-Saxon Mersea.
But setting these pieces against the wider historical and regional
context helps us to make sense of some vivid episodes, glimpsed in startling
detail against the hazy, far distant background of the first millennium AD.
Published by Mersea Island Museum Trust 2010.
Format: A4 (297 x 210), 44 pages with photographs and illustrations.
Paperback
Price: £5.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the Author.
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MERSEA MEMORIES
By Brian Jay
Revised Second Edition
Postcards and photographs of:
Events such as King George V Jubilee Celebrations 1935; The Great Tide of
1953; The Big Freeze of 1962/3.
The Island characters such as:
Rev. Pierrepont Edwards (Old Spiery); 'Admiral' Bill Wyatt; Liza D'Wit;
Brassy Mussett, William Rudlin.
Scenes of the Island's first buses; Stacky barges at The Strood;
Early Regattas; Horse drawn carts; The golf course; Digby's Shop;
Smith's Windmill - plus many forgotten and disappearing buildings.
First published 1990. This edition 2008.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 56 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £6.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the author.
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MORE MERSEA MEMORIES
By Brian Jay
A further varied selection of postcards and photographs of
Mersea Island - people, transport, the regatta, oysters, the Strood...
Published 1991.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 52 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £6.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the author.
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BUSINESS AS USUAL
By Brian M. Jay
Businesses on the island. Shops, garages, holiday homes, boat yards,
nursing homes, laundry, golf club, restaurant, pubs, Hall Barn Country Club,
stables...
Photographs and old advertisements.
Published 1996.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 56 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £6.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the author.
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BUCKETS, YOKES AND WOODEN SPOKES
Mersea Island. The Past 100 Years.
By Brian M. Jay
Wildfowling, churches, pubs, Smith's Mill, buses, the Barrow, smacks,
barges, brickmaking.
A collection of old photographs...
Two buckets were carried on a yoke - to collect fresh water from wells and
springs.
The early buses had solid tyres and wooden spoke wheels. The body could easily
be removed from the chassis so it could be converted to a lorry.
Published 1999.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 64 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £6.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the author.
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ISLE OF MERSEA
The Marsh Island
By Brian M. Jay
100 photographs and postcards of life on Mersea Island in days gone by.
Farming, seed growing, the Regatta, schools, carts, houseboats,
football and cricket, oyster dredging...
Published 2005.
Format: A5 (210 x 148), 64 pages with photographs.
Paperback
Price: £6.00 including UK postage and packing.
Available in the Museum Shop or you can order by
Email
from the author.
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Nice Looking Essex Girls Afloat
David Starling
Essex has the longest coastline of any English county.
From the Thames in the south to the Stour in the north is about 50 miles,
but follow the shore-line of the creeks, islands and estuaries and you will
cover nearly 400 miles. On this journey over the centuries you would have met
fishermen, bargemen, smugglers, boat-builders, wildfowlers and the captains
and crews of great yachts. You would have met their grandmothers, mothers,
wives, daughters and granddaughters, most as tough as their men - sometimes
more so because it was they who had to hold the family together through
hardships and adversity.
You would then have begun to understand why so many of these men named
their vessels for their women.
Proceeds from this book go to EWAG - Essex Women's Advisory Group,
in Support of Women and Girls in Essex.
Format: A4 (297 x 210), 40 pages and over 60 illustrations.
Paperback
ISBN No: 978-0-9567397-1-1
Price: £10.00 in the Museum Shop,
or by mail from
Wivenhoe Bookshop.
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River Colne Shipbuilders
John Collins and James Dodds
John Collins' research of the shipping registers has brought to light this fascinating and almost
forgotten history and shown how the shipyards of this small river have played such
an important part in the affairs of the nautical world.
The book charts the history of the shipyards and boat builders from 1786 to 1988
and follows the river, flowing downstream
from Colchester Hythe, through Rowhedge and Wivenhoe, and on to Brightlingsea.
Each yard is covered, from Stuttle's at the Hythe to Aldous at
Brightlingsea, from the speedy racing cutters and schooners of Sainty and
Harvey to the innovations of iron and steel from Forrestt's and Rowhedge Ironworks,
and finally to the last yards which closed in the late 1980s.
Format: 320 x 240mm, 328 pages with over 450 illustrations printed in full colour.
Hardback and Paperback
ISBN No: 978-0-9552035-8-9
Available in the Museum Shop, or for more details, see
www.jardinepress.co.uk.
Published at the same time is "Ships built on the River Colne" -
an electronic book on CD-ROM in PDF form suitable for PC or Mac.
It lists nearly 5,000 ships and boats built by shipbuilders on the
river during more that 200 years of enterprise and craftsmanship.
Available direct from John Collins at £10.95 -
Email
to order.
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Waterside Memories
Frank Drake
A personal history of TOLLESBURY WATERFRONT as seen through the eyes
of a local shipwright.
Recording the people, their vessels and trades, it recalls the way
of life at the waterside at intervals between 1865 and 1980.
Commencing with a forefather working with Isambard Kingdom Brunel
on the Old Hall Syphon, the book tells of the formation of the
boatyards at "WOODUP", the families who worked in them, their
customers and the vessels from which they all earned a living.
Here we learn of skills, courage, character and
'tricks-of-the-trade' employed by village seafaring men in
wresting a living from the sea.
Published 2010
Format: A4 (297 X 210) 102 pages with many photographs.
Paperback with coloured cover of painting depicting
'The Hard' and Granary at "Woodup" during 1860.
Price: £12.00 in the Museum Shop
or
£11.00 plus postage and packing direct from
the Publisher -
Email to order.
PP rates - U.K. - £3; Europe - £4.50;
Australia / N.Z. / USA - £7.50.
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The book below has been republished to celebrate the 200th birthday
of BOADICEA in 2008.
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Boadicea CK 213
The story of an East Coast Fishing Smack
Michael Frost
2nd Edition 2007
This is the story of East Coast fishing smacks, particularly BOADICEA CK 213,
in the period between the wars. In telling it, her owner has combined an
accurate and thorough record of the techniques of sailing this now extinct
species of working boat with a sensitive description of the times and the
people with whom he was involved.
Format: 215 x 138mm, 215 pages with drawings by the author.
Paperback
ISBN No: 978-1906510-152
Price: £12.00 including UK postage and packing.
To order, go to
www.oystersmack.org.uk
or visit Mersea Museum shop.
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