Coastguard Cottages on the waterfront
Coastguard Cottages stood in West Mersea’s older waterfront neighbourhood until a fire destroyed the row in 1949. Ken Mole, born in 1935, lived there throughout his childhood. His recollections, recorded decades after the fire, are an important first-hand account of the lost cottages.
West Mersea also had a coastal signalling station: an early photograph shows a coastguard hut and mast on Coast Road used for signalling to Tollesbury. A postcard of the scene was posted on 27 September 1909, with the Waverley Hotel on one side of the mast and Ivy Dene on the other. The hut and mast were part of the coastguard’s shore operation and should not be confused with the residential cottages destroyed in 1949.
Ken Mole and the fire
Albert Streeter interviewed Ken Mole in 1994 for issue 190 of the Lions Talking Magazine. The fourteen-minute recording includes the 1949 fire and Mole’s memories of life near the shore. The cottages disappeared before the later redevelopment of parts of the waterfront; they should not be confused with the separate coastguard signalling hut and mast.
Work after leaving school
After leaving the cottages, Mole worked for the carrier Mr Ward, at Bromans Farm and as caretaker at New Orleans. He also sailed on yachts in the Mediterranean. These experiences belong to the wider story of people who grew up in Old City after the war.
Community work
Mole’s 1994 interview also records his involvement in Mersea Lions, which had been established about sixteen years earlier. He had recently become its president.