| Brian Jay died on 30th November. He was one of my dearest friends. We were mates through most of our adult life and worked together on building sites when he was still doing his apprenticeship as an electrician. We served in the Mersea Island Lions Club together and he introduced me to postcard collecting when he was chairman of Colchester and District Card Collectors Club. In more recent years we have served together on the committee of Mersea Island Museum where his vast knowledge of local history has been most valuable.
His many books of old local pictures are still much in demand and the illustrated talks that he and Pauline gave always played to full houses. He was a member of Mersea Island Sea Cadets and recently when they were featured in a special exhibition in the museum, most of the detail and pictures came from him. He was a very experienced professional diver and did a great deal of work recording the underwater ruins of Dunwich off the Suffolk coast. He was member of the West Mersea Lifeboat crew for several years. He had a fine collection of old local postcards which he used to illustrate his books and he also had a collection of old glass and earthenware bottles, many retrieved from underwater during his diving. He could always be relied on to put names to faces on the old photos that came into the museum such was his knowledge of Old Mersea. He was a true son of Mersea Island and he will be missed terribily.
Pauline and Brian Jay at my 80th Birthday Party February 2012. Photograph by Simon Mole
Published in Mersea Life January 2020, page 4. | 
