Work at The Gables
Cecil Mussett, born in 1930, began evening work for Vic Sams aged twelve. Sams was then growing vegetables at The Gables in Melrose Avenue, West Mersea. Mussett's account records a child's introduction to agricultural work while still at school.
When Sams moved the business to fields on the west side of Chapmans Lane, Cecil went to work there too. The move connected a house garden and later commercial seed-growing fields within the expanding west of the village.
A specialist seed-growing cycle
Mussett's recollections describe a two-year seed-growing cycle. This was not simply market gardening to sell vegetables as food: growing crops for seed required time, care and a different pattern of work. The recorded account is especially useful for understanding what happened on fields now associated more readily with housing.
After Sams retired
Vic Sams retired in 1974. Cecil Mussett then began another career as a postman, working first in Colchester and later on Mersea. He married Jane Cudmore in 1953; the couple spoke together about island life when interviewed in February 2010.
Cecil and Jane Mussett's interview
The 2010 conversation with Brian Jay and Tony Millatt survives in two parts, lasting about 35 and 23 minutes. As well as the seed-growing work, it places local farming alongside other mid-twentieth-century occupations. For the wider picture see working lives.