West Mersea becomes a visitor destination
Hotels, sailing clubs, holiday plots and beach facilities developed in West Mersea between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War. The older oyster-fishing village and its working harbour remained alongside the new businesses.
Organised sailing from 1899
Seven men founded the Mersea Sailing Club at the White Hart Hotel on 22 April 1899. The club changed its name to West Mersea Yacht Club in 1926. Its sailing programme brought visiting yachts and racing crews to the Blackwater.
Hotels and guest houses
The Waverley Hotel on Coast Road appears on a postcard mailed in October 1912. A new Fountain Hotel opened at Queen’s Corner around 1913, at a time when promoters were discussing a proposed railway to the island. The White Hart and Victory also served visitors.
The Victory’s new Coast Road building gained a dance hall to its east in 1924, but the hall was destroyed by fire in 1942. In 1930 Winifred and Ronnie Hone opened the Sailing and Social Club in Arthur Hempstead’s former shed on Coast Road; that building also burnt down and the club was rebuilt further back from the shore.
Highfields, on the corner of St Peter’s Road and Mersea Avenue, was being advertised as a guest house by the early 1950s. Houseboats near Hove Hill provided another form of holiday accommodation.
Building plots and the seafront
The 1908 Queensville and Firs Estate sales offered freehold building plots. An estate map showed a proposed station and railway pier, but neither was built. The council had also discussed a hotel, ferry and pier as part of its plans for a seaside resort.
The 1908 sales brochure was marketing future building land, not describing a railway already under construction. West Mersea Parish Council’s earlier plans had even proposed a seaside resort with a pier, ferry and hotel; the island nevertheless remained dependent on the Strood road crossing and boats.
The south-facing shore developed with beach huts, new roads and visitor facilities. Photographs identify what became Victoria Esplanade as the New Coast Road by 1939.
Sailing and working boats share the waterfront
The Sailing and Social Club opened on Coast Road in 1930, while yacht repairers, sailmakers, oyster merchants and shipwrights continued trading nearby. Coast Road, Victoria Esplanade and the houseboats cover the surviving places and photographs.
West Mersea’s early resort and railway plans
Mersea Museum, historical records of the Victory and Sailing and Social Club