Mussetts in the Old City
Harry Thomas Mussett's Memories of a Laney describes the close-knit houses and families of The Lane, where waterfront trades, domestic life and wartime events overlapped. The memoir identifies neighbours and relatives but is not a complete pedigree of everyone bearing the Mussett name.
Military service and the prisoner-of-war years
Walter Mark “Navvy” Mussett was a prisoner during the First World War. A wedding photograph records his marriage to Edith Sampson in August 1922. Another Mussett story is preserved in the recordings of Elgar Frank Mussett, born in West Mersea in 1920.
Elgar went from West Mersea School to technical school in Colchester and became a carpentry apprentice with Clifford White in 1936. His wartime work moved from building flying boats to radar and then Singapore. After the Japanese capture of Singapore in 1942, he escaped to Sumatra but was taken prisoner and sent to work on the Burma railway. He returned to Mersea after the war and worked as a carpenter for Clarke & Carter. Dennis Chatters recorded his story in 1982 in two interviews lasting 25 and 36 minutes.
From seed fields to postal rounds
Cecil Edward Mussett was born in 1930; his father worked at the brickyard and the family lived in Barfield Road. Cecil started helping seed-grower Vic Sams when he was twelve. Work later moved from the garden of The Gables in Melrose Avenue to fields by Chapmans Lane. Cecil married Jane Cudmore in 1953. Following Sams's retirement in 1974, Cecil became a postman, first in Colchester and then on Mersea.
Cecil and Jane discussed these changes in two interviews recorded in February 2010, lasting 35 and 23 minutes. For Harry's distinct Old City memoir, see Harry Thomas Mussett.
Family voices and records
Elgar, Cecil and Jane Mussett's recorded interviews · Harry Thomas Mussett, Memories of a Laney.