Roman buildings and tesselated pavements close to the quayside have led to suggestions that a small Roman settlement and port existed on the site of the modern town, with a road linking it to the nearby town of Camulodunum (modern Colchester).[2] The nearby burial mound to the north of the town is also Roman.[3]
West Mersea was recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086, at which time it had a population of 84 households.[4]
In 1963, the lifeboat station was established next to the West Mersea Yacht Club, one of the first ten inshore lifeboat stations in the British Isles.[5] Originally served by a D class lifeboat, this was replaced by a B class, Atlantic 21, lifeboat in 1972. In 1992, a new boathouse and slipway were opened by the Duke of Kent. In 2001, a B class Atlantic 75 lifeboat was stationed at West Mersea, and then in 2015 this was replaced with the current B class Atlantic 85 named Just George, funded by £210,000 of community donations.[6]
The town is served by a community centre,[7] various shops, restaurants, small hotels, public houses, a petrol station, bank, library, museum, and several churches, including the Norman St Peter and St Paul (Church of England), Roman Catholic, Methodist, and West Mersea Free Church, affiliated to the Baptist Union. There are four cemeteries under the care of the Town Council including a woodland burial ground.[8]
West Mersea has a high proportion of very old people and many of the town's amenities cater for them.[9]
The North Sea at West Mersea is the inspiration for the memoir Footloose in France, beginning there at the seaside and ending at a fish restaurant on the harbour.[10]
^Crummy, Philip (1997) City of Victory; the story of Colchester - Britain's first Roman town. Published by Colchester Archaeological Trust (ISBN1 897719 04 3)
^Toynbee, J.M.C. (1996) Death and Burial in the Roman World. Published by Thames and Hudson. (ISBN0-8018-5507-1)
^Adamson, John, and Clive Jackson, Footloose in France, Cambridge: John Adamson, 2023, ISBN978-1-898565-18-5, prologue, pp. 7–8 and epilogue, pp. 209–12.
