This site can confidently be said to have been continuously occupied for at least 2,000 year.

The Roman pavement, low and to the left of the front gate was of a corridor or outbuilding to the main villa, which lies mostly under the church. This Roman level is accounted for by the action of worms and the accretion of decaying vegetation, The Romans exported their life style and it is reasonabl-e to imagine the large settlement on Mersea as the summer residence for top administrators in Colchester which was, for 17 years, until Buddicca burnt it down, capital city of Roman Britain. The two levels of occupation, revealed when the manhole outside the gate was dug, may well be pre and post-Buddicca, as in Colchester.

Excavating for the childrens* sandpit here revealed much broken brick and tile, the dump, presumably, of unwanted material by builders of the Saxon church, who incorporated much of it into the tower. The pavement can be seen as constructed of tesserae, small cubes of brick, the markings on some of which show evidence of other use. These tesserae come to the surface all over the garden but there has been no evidence of any structure to the far side of the main house. Human bones were found when the W fence to the front garden was put there in the '30s - a likely site for a Roman burial ground,

Earliest maps show this to be the site of a small Benedictine Priory (two monks), daughter of a house in Rouen and mentioned in Domesday but tentative explorations have failed to locate it. As a wooden structure, nothing probably exists now apart from its rubbish dump. The barn and Brew House are the remains of a Tudor farming settlement onto which the existing house was built in 1728 by oyster merchant Cyril Webb - his initials are carved on a brick at the SE corner and the date just W of the front door which, by the way, is mentioned in Pevsner's Houses of Essex.

All subsequent owners are known, the famous local Pullen family had it for many years and grew seeds. Granddad Pullen used to be put in his cart at the White Hart to sleep it off while the donkey found its own way home! The SE ground floor once served as the only school room on the Island, and the outline of the entrance can still be seen on the N wall. Contrary to expectations, Yew Tree House never served as rectory. The old farm house at the rear was pulled down in the * 20s and the present kitchen built. Commander Orgill and his wife owned it from the mid-thirties to the mid-fifties, uncovered the Roman pavement and set out the garden much as it is now.

Longest resident owners are the present Richard and Doreen Fox moved here in 1963, His psychiatric consulting rooms are in the expanded Brew House, where all the brewing and baking were once done: the faggot oven and brewing vessel survive. Pictures of the 7 generations of medical ancestors may be viewed on request.

The Author of this article is not known. It is a computer printed page that has come from Pat Kirby in 2025.