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My mother, Mary Ann Pullen, born in 1858, was the twelfth child of George and Sarah Cooke Pullen and the last child to be born in a wooden cottage still standing in the south - west corner of Yew Tree House field facing the Blackwater. My great-grandfather, John Pullen, then lived at the big house. After his death his son George took possession and three more children were born, making fifteen. Here are their names: George, Isaac, Joseph, Benjamin, Charles, Jesse, Albert, Sarah, Jane, Matilda, Isabella, Katharine, Mary, Ann, Charlotte and Priscilla. A number of these names are biblical, for George Pullen was an ardent Wesleyan and a founder trustee of the Wesleyan (Methodist) church when it was built in 1861.

My grandmother`s second name, Cooke, comes from a romance only partially known to us; it was her mother`s maiden name. Martha Cooke, born in 1792, was daughter of Robert Cooke, a wealthy builder, farmer and oyster merchant whose name appears in the Oyster Protection Association`s records soon after it was founded in 1789. She was a gay young girl and the toast of Colchester garrison. Before I was born mother had one white satin dancing slipper and the linen stock of a riding habit, relics of great-grandmother`s youth.

Martha paid a guinea to have her horoscope cast. I wonder if it foretold her marriage. That marriage must have caused a buzz of gossip, for she married one of her father`s workmen, John Woodward. All we have left of great - grandmother Woodward now is a hand - beaten silver spoon. It was made by Hester Bateman, the well - known silversmith, between 1780 and 1790 and is scored with marks made by the fifteen Pullen babies.

A slab of stone covers the Cooke vault, on the right of West Mersea parish church - yard as one enters the gate. The iron railings were removed in the drive for scrap iron during World War I.

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Yew Tree House provided ample space for the large Pullen family with its dining room and withdrawing room in the front, a little panelled sitting room and a large kitchen at the back, four bedrooms above, then two attics. The panelled sitting room was called the courting room and was often in use. Thirteen out of the fifteen married. There were no fewer than three staircases; the front hall had the fine spacious staircase with shallow steps of the period, a short flight, then a complete turn and a similar flight leading to a large landing lighted by the window over the right had its own little staircase shut away by a door next the fireplace; and a third staircase ran up from a corner of the kitchen.

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There is one written record of grand - father Pullen`s seed business still extant. His seed merchants were Waite Nash & Co., 79 Southwark Street, S.E., and in 1885 seventy bushels and twenty-two hundred-weight of various seeds - peas, beans, brocoli, cucumbers, marrow, nasturtium, red migonette and others - brought in the princely sum of £199 18s 6d. He may have dealt with another merchant, and I have heard Suttons mentioned, but by today`s values £200 might be £2,000. I do know that at one time the family bread bill was £40 a year. Several sons worked with their father.

The photographs of grandfather and grandmother were taken in Queen Victoria Street. He, sometimes accompanied by his wife, went up to London once a year on business and took any daughters who might be working there as domestics to St. James` Hall to hear the Christy Minstrels.

The official guide gives the information that nothing survives of the priory which was situated in the grounds of Yew Tree House. This reference is to a Benedictine priory founded in the reign of Edward the Confessor. I wonder whether there was some relic of this priory until the 1930s, for on the east of the house stood a magnificent walnut tree, the largest in England. It was preserved by Essex County Council, the hollows being filled with two tons of cement and brick rubble. It was then 400 years old and estimated to live a further 200 years.

Was this tree planted by the monks before the dissolution of the monasteries in 1542? It bore heavy crops of excellent dessert walnuts. Unfortunately, a heavy gale split the trunk and it gradually dis - integrated.

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George Pullen and his family were all musical. The sons played the violin or guitar, and one or two had English concertinas made to their own specifications. They cost £6 to £8 each, but I understand that the present price would be nearer £100.

Uncel Ben sang bass, Uncle Joseph sang tenor, two sisters were altos and the rest sopranos, while grandfather conducted. On summer evenings they often sand and played under the walnut tree to entertain themselves and passers - by.

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An assortment of furniture had accumulated through the generations - a dower chest which could not have been brought by the original Huguenot refugees, Chippendale chairs, a Queen Anne hall table beautifully prserved and a Stuart cane-and-wood day bed. With such a family it had hard weqar and some finished up as firewood. Some of the chairs, the Queen Anne table and the dower chest are dispersed among descendants. The sharp eyes of a dealer saw the Stuart day bed in the home of one of my aunts and offered her a gaudy stuffed sofa in place of it, and she was pleased with the bargain. I can see her point of view, for those day beds look anything but comfortable, but a museum piece was lost to the Pullens.

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I have no definite information about the ownership of Yew Tree House until this century. It may or may not have belonged to my great-grandfather John Pullen, and I should imagine that if grandfather did own it the property would have been mortgaged.

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Frederick Smith, a builder from Norfolk, married first Sarah Pullen and after he death her sister Isabella. Each sister had a son, George and Edwin. Their father had bought Yew Tree House before the endof the last century [1800s] and the sons rented it and the field to Uncle Joseph from grandfather's death in 1893 until 1937. George and Edwin promised their uncle never to sell the property in his lifetime. They kept their promise, but only the younger brother Edwin was then alive. Joseph Pullen's onlyh son had made a career with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, so Edwin, whose professional interests were in South Wales, sold the property.

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The Pullen connection was ended. Some things we regret. The double pink hyacinths that unfailingly put up green shoots and bloomed every spring in my mother'slifetime have been trampled to pieces by the feet of builders men and the little courting room with its panelling disappeared during alterations, but these losses are offset by bedrooms opening of a corridor instead of three interconnecting, and a proper water supply and heading.

The facade is as it ws orginally and, best of all, Yew Tree House is still a loved family home.