West Mersea

"MERSEA (WEST), a parish in the hundred of WINSTREE, county of ESSEX, 9 miles (S.) from Colchester, containing 772 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Colchester, and diocese of London, rated in the king's books at £22. Mrs. Simpson was patroness in 1797. The church is dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. There is a place of worship for Baptists. This parish is bounded on the north and west by the Mersea channel, and on the south by the mouth of the Blackwater river; at low-water, every eight hours, there is a passage from the main land into the parish, over the causeway of the Strode, which is kept in order by the rental of an estate of about thirty acres, called the Strode lands. In 1730, when some alterations were made at West Mersea hall, a very fine tesselated pavement was discovered, twenty-one feet and a half long, and eighteen and a half broad. From these and other antique remains, it is probable that the island of Mersea was the residence of the Count of the Saxon shore, or of some other Roman officer. Here was anciently a Benedictine convent, dedicated to St. Peter, which was a cell to the abbey of St. Audoen, at Rouen, in Normandy." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) - copyright Mel Lockie 2016]