Mersea Island
— — the tide that decides when you go home.
Not only on a wall.
“A small island in the Blackwater estuary, reached by the Strood, a low causeway that the high spring tide closes for an hour or two. West Mersea sits at the south end, around the boatyard and the oyster sheds; East Mersea is quieter, sheep and saltmarsh. The Romans took oysters from these flats. The locals still do. The boats lean over in the mud when the water goes out.
Mersea Island, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Mersea Island sits in the mouth of the Blackwater estuary in Essex, eight kilometres south of Colchester, between the Blackwater and Colne rivers. About seven and a half square kilometres in area, it carries a resident population near seven thousand, almost all in West Mersea. The only road connection is the Strood, a causeway built by the Romans and rebuilt many times since; the high spring tides still cover it twice a month. East Mersea remains mostly farmland, saltmarsh, and the long shingle beach at Cudmore Grove.
The Blackwater flats around Mersea have been an oyster ground since at least the Roman occupation. Excavations at the Roman town of Camulodunum, eight kilometres north, have produced shells from these same beds. The native flat oyster, Ostrea edulis, is grown here in trestle beds laid out across the tidal mud; the Pacific rock oyster has been added since the 1960s. The estuary's brackish, slow-flushing water gives the oysters a strong mineral profile, distinct from Whitstable to the south. Local boats still dredge under sail at the annual Smack race.
Mersea sits forty-five minutes from Colchester by car and roughly an hour and a half from central London by train and bus. Tide tables for the Strood are posted at both ends of the causeway and published weekly in the local paper; cars get caught most months. The Mersea Island Museum in West Mersea covers the Roman barrow, the smack fleet, and the oyster trade in three small rooms. Cudmore Grove Country Park, at the east end, holds the long shingle beach and the Red Crag fossil cliffs.