Cynthia Williams with her sturdy teapot and Dr Jane Pearson and Professor James Raven
A teapot that survived wartime bombing is shedding new light on the history of a former mansion.
It was only the object - along with its owners James and Emily Bowers and their grandson Douglas - to survive when the family’s farmhouse on the Marks Hall estate in Coggeshall was flattened by a German doodlebug.
Cynthia Williams, 68, who inherited the teapot, has given it to researchers at the University of Essex, who are piecing together the estate’s history from Saxon times to the present day.
