The Mersea Island Museum is
an independent museum established in 1976 and occupying purpose-built premises
in the centre of West Mersea, just to the east of the Parish Church. The
traditional local activities of fishing, oystering, wild fowling and boat
building are represented. The reconstruction within the museum of a typical
weather-boarded fisherman’s cottage provides an interior display centred on a
Victorian coal-fired kitchen range, with adjoining facilities for washing
clothes using old-fashioned manual equipment.
They currently have an
exhibition of the contents of the Roman Barrow on Mersea. It contained the
remains of a cremation in a glass urn
which had been placed in a lead casket, a brick enclosure built round it and
the whole thing covered in earth to make a sizeable mound which is still
visible near the entry to the island.
We then moved to the church
of St Peter and St Paul in the High Street. It is very ancient and it is
believed that the first church was built on Roman foundations in the 7th
or 8th century. The interior is very beautiful with some modern
coloured window glass.
Our guide then took us along
the promenade pointing out the various buildings of interest, the boats and the
fishing sheds finishing up at the west end of the island which is a small
village in its own right.
After lunch some of us
visited the Roman barrow and went inside by the passage left by the excavation.
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