The house at the top of the village
The Hall stands at 4 High Street, close to St Peter and St Paul’s Church. Its surviving timber-framed house dates from the sixteenth century, with a plastered exterior and a hipped peg-tiled roof. The building is private and has been Grade II listed since 11 October 1949.
The wider Hall estate
Thomas May’s 1836 will placed West Mersea Hall, its farmland, the manor, the right to nominate the parish vicar and other land in the hands of trustees. His son Thomas was then occupying the Hall farm; the will allowed him to continue farming it under agreed conditions.
The 1836 will dealt with more than the standing sixteenth-century house: it included farming land, manorial rights, the right of presentation to the vicarage and two family pews in the church chancel. The legal estate and the physical house were related, but they should not be treated as the same thing.
Built over an older landscape
Roman walls and mosaics have been recorded in the old village around the church; the Roman villa complex belongs to a much earlier period of settlement than the standing sixteenth-century Hall.
A compact heritage cluster
Within a short distance are St Peter & St Paul, Yew Tree House, St Peter’s Well and the top of Coast Road.
Exterior details at 4 High Street
The Grade II-listed building has a sixteenth-century timber frame and plastered walls beneath a hipped, peg-tiled roof. Two red-brick chimneys survive. A cast-iron porch with an acorn finial, from the nineteenth century, stands in front of the panelled entrance door.
The north façade has four small-paned sash windows at first-floor level, a central semi-hexagonal bay window and two further ground-floor sashes. The house was historically listed as West Hall and was first designated in 1949.