I started my education at West Mersea Council School, Barfield Road in the spring of 1937. I was a very reluctant starter and after several failed attempts my father loaded me on to the back seat of his bicycle in the pretence of going to East Mersea to visit Auntie Nellie. We ...

With the evacuees leaving the island we had our school back full time. The young male teachers Mr Reason, Mr Burt, Mr Davies all went off into the services. I understand Mr Hucklesby was at our school for a short time before going off into the services but I don't remember him ...

Well known Mersea business man Wilfred Bacon died at this home in High street North on June 26th at the age of 80, a real Mersea native from an old Mersea family. Wilf, as he was always known, received all of his education at West Mersea Council school ...

I have always had a keen interest in local working craft in the days of sail, in particular the barges that loaded large stacks of hay and straw for delivery to London in the days when much of London's traffic was horse drawn - including the buses. Both of my grandfathers served ...

I recently received a telephone call from Terry Slowgrove, owner of Abberton Bakery informing me that it had been sold and the new owner was clearing it out that day. Would I like to come over and take anything we would like for our Mersea Museum?

In the early part of the last century Leonard Weaver planned a large developement for West Mersea which he named the Fairhaven Estate. It included a Temperance Hotel and a statue of Queen Victoria on the Victoria Esplanade. The developement was well under way when the first world ...

Since writing the article about Abberton Barkery in December Mersea LIFE, I have received more details from Mr Alan Smith. Alan is the son of the late Frederick Smith, the last Smith Family owner of West Mersea Bakery. Alan had expected to follow his father into the Mersea ...

There has been some uncertainty in recent issues Mersea Life as to whether Mersea ever did have a railway. I have in my collection, the old photo above, showing a railway that ran along ...

One of the visitors to our museum's resource centre on Saturday 17th January was Lion John Gradwell. He is already working on the 2015 Lions Festival and in particicular the vintage vehicle display. The purpose of his visit was to find what the museum had on Edgar Potter ...

I, together with several hundred others, went along to the Lions Summer show at Waldegraves on Saturday August 8th. I had hoped to travel in style in a vintage Eastern National bus but being unable to get there until late I only managed a short trip from the car park to the show ...

Underwoods Garage in Kingsland Road closed on the 1st October 2015. It was built in the 1930s when Philip Underwood moved his business from East Mersea. The first photograph is from the Brian Jay ...

I recently went to the cinema in Colchester, my first visit to the Odeon since it moved from Crouch Street. I went to see the film 'Dad's Army' because I always think the TV series is the funniest programme ever to come on television. Its a good film, but there will never be ...

A piece of World War 2 shrapnel recently landed back on Mersea - in the Museum letterbox. It came from John Simons, whose family came to live with relatives in East Mersea to escape the bombs coming down around the Chatham Dockyard in Kent. The shrapnel had originally arrived in ...

MEMORY LANE From Ron Green and Tony Millatt - Mersea Island Museum. In our May item for Mersea Life, we referred to an old newspaper cutting concerning The Nutshell and Little Timbers in The Lane. In another cutting, dating from 1906, we find an interesting tale concerning ...