Churches of Mersea Island: West & East Mersea history

St Peter and St Paul, West Mersea

The Grade I-listed parish church includes an eleventh-century west tower and Roman brick and tile reused in its walls. Its medieval fabric also includes a thirteenth-century font, later windows and alterations to the chancel and porch. Roman building remains have been recorded near the church and in the surrounding old village.

The tower's lower north and south windows survive from the eleventh century. The fifteenth-century north porch has an entrance arch and two carved stone corbels from an earlier roof. Inside are an octagonal Purbeck marble font of the thirteenth century, a medieval coffin lid and two historic chests, one with sixteenth-century ironwork.

St Peter and St Paul — building history

St Edmund King and Martyr, East Mersea

St Edmund is also Grade I listed. The present church has twelfth- or thirteenth-century origins, with fourteenth-century work in the main body and tower and a fifteenth-century north aisle and chapel. Its interior includes an octagonal font, an elaborate seventeenth-century pulpit and a surviving hourglass bracket.

The west tower has a chequered plinth, flint and rubble walls, and an octagonal stair turret. The south porch was built around 1680, with turned oak columns on brick base walls. The fifteenth-century font and mid-seventeenth-century pulpit survive inside; the latter retains its elaborate wooden sounding canopy.

St Edmund — building and churchyard history

Chapels and nonconformist worship

West Mersea Free Church opened its first building in 1805. The Methodist chapel in Mill Road opened on 10 July 1861. East Mersea also had a Strict Baptist meeting house dating from the early nineteenth century.

The Assembly Hall opened in East Road in June 1910. The Catholic church of St Cedd and St Gregory opened in Barfield Road in 1962.

Historic church buildings

The medieval parish churches are protected for their architectural and historic importance. The national listings describe their surviving fabric, including the eleventh-century west tower at St Peter and St Paul and the fourteenth-century tower and nave at St Edmund.

Historic England: St Peter and St Paul, West Mersea · Historic England: St Edmund, East Mersea