You searched for "WEST MERSEA" in our simplified list of the main towns and villages, but the match we found was not what you wanted. There are several other ways of finding places within Vision of Britain, so read on for detailed advice and 8 possible matches we have found for you:

• If you meant to type something else:
  
  



• If you typed a postcode, it needs to be a full postcode: some letters, then some numbers, then more letters. Old-style postal districts like "SE3" are not precise enough (if you know the location but do not have a precise postcode or placename, see below):
  
  
  
  
  
• If you are looking for a place-name, it needs to be the name of a town or village, or possibly a district within a town. We do not know about individual streets or buildings, unless they give their names to a larger area (though you might try our collections of Historical Gazetteers and British travel writing). Do not include the name of a county, region or nation with the place-name: if we know of more than one place in Britain with the same name, you get to choose the right one from a list or map:
  
  
  
  
  
• You have just searched a list of the main towns, villages and localities of Britain which we have kept as simple as possible. It is based on a much more detailed list of legally defined administrative units: counties, districts, parishes, wapentakes and so on. This is the real heart of our system, and you may be better off directly searching it. There are no units called "WEST MERSEA" (excluding any that have already been grouped into the places you have already searched), but administrative unit searches can be narrowed by area and type, and broadened using wild cards and "sound-alike" matching:
  
  



• If you are looking for hills, rivers, castles ... or pretty much anything other than the "places" where people live and lived, you need to look in our collection of Historical Gazetteers. This contains the complete text of three gazetteers published in the late 19th century — over 90,000 entries. Although there are no descriptive gazetteer entries for placenames exactly matching your search term (other than those already linked to "places"), the following entries mention "WEST MERSEA":

  Place name	County	Entry	Source
  Essex	Essex	Mersea, &c. Essex is one of the Metropolitan shires, or "Six Home Counties, " and took its name from the East Saxons. It rests upon the London clay, and is watered by the Stour, Colne, Chelmer, Crouch, Thames, Roding, and Lea; the surface, flat near the coast and the rivers, is undulating and sometimes hilly towards the NW.; the soil is generally fertile. Wheat and barley of fine quality are largely grown in the NW. and the centre; the marshes on the coast have for the most part been drained and converted into fertile grazing lands. (For agricultural	Bartholomew
  ESSEX	Essex	Mersea, at the mouth of Blackwater river; Wallasea and Foulness, at the mouth of the Crouch river; and Canvey, on the Thames. The sea-board is low, flat, and partly marshy; has suffered much devastation and fracture by encroachments of the sea; and, except to a trifling extent at Harwich, South-end, and Purfleet, is protected from further injury by strong embankments. The tracts inland, to the centre and further west	Imperial
  LEXDEN	Essex	Mersea, and West Mersea; the Sub-district of Stanway, containing the parishes of Stanway, Marks-Tey, Little Tey, Layer-Marney	Imperial
  Mersea	Essex	West Mersea - East Mersea , 1989 ac. and 859 tidal water and 1607 foreshore, pop. 283; P.O.; West Mersea , 3193 ac. and 667 tidal	Bartholomew
  MERSEA	Essex	Mersea and West Mersea. It was known to the Saxons as Meresige; it seems to have been occupied by the Romans	Imperial
  MERSEA (WEST)	Essex	MERSEA (WEST) , a parish in Lexden district. Essex 5½ miles WSW of Brightlingsea r. station, and 8 S by W of Colchester	Imperial
  ROCHESTER	Essex Hertfordshire Kent	ROCHESTER , a city, a parish, and a sub-district, in Kent, and a diocese in Kent, Essex, and Herts. The	Imperial
  West Mersea	Essex	West Mersea , 8 miles SW. of Colchester, Essex; P.O. See MERSEA, WEST.	Bartholomew

  It may also be worth using "sound-alike" and wildcard searching to find names similar to your search term:
  
  



• Place-names also appear in our collection of British travel writing. If the place-name you are interested in appears in our simplified list of "places", the search you have just done should lead you to mentions by travellers. However, many other places are mentioned, including places outside Britain and weird mis-spellings. You can search for them in the Travel Writing section of this site.



• If you know where you are interested in, but don't know the place-name, go to our historical mapping, and zoom in on the area you are interested in. Click on the "Information" icon, and your mouse pointer should change into a question mark: click again on the location you are interested in. This will take you to a page for that location, with links to both administrative units, modern and historical, which cover it, and to places which were nearby. For example, if you know where an ancestor lived, Vision of Britain can tell you the parish and Registration District it was in, helping you locate your ancestor's birth, marriage or death.