Foulness Island
Foulness Island is an island in Essex, England. It is separated from the mainland by narrow creeks. The island is usually closed to the general public, having been taken over for military use in 1914. The island forms a civil parish called Foulness, which had a population of 158 at the 2021 census.
The main settlements on the island are Churchend and Courtsend, both at the northern end of the island. By July 2022 the general store and post office in Churchend had been abandoned. The George and Dragon pub in Churchend closed in 2007, while the church of St Mary the Virgin closed in May 2010. In 2019, the Southend Echo reported plans for the church to be converted into a five-bedroom home.
Foulness Island is predominantly farmland and is protected from the sea by a sea wall. The island's unusual name is derived from the Old English fugla næsse, referring to wildfowl. It is an internationally important site for migrating and breeding birds, including pied avocets. During the North Sea flood of 1953, almost the entire island was flooded and two people died.
Before 1922, when the military road was built, the only access was across the Maplin Sands via the Broomway, a tidal path said to predate the Romans, or by boat. Public rights of way exist, but the island is now run by QinetiQ on behalf of the Ministry of Defence as MoD Shoeburyness with access to the island by non-residents subject to stringent times and restrictions.
Geography
The island covers bounded by its sea walls. Before 1847, tithes were payable in kind, but under the terms of the Tithe Act 1836, these were replaced by payments of money. The commutation commission, who were responsible for setting the level of payments, produced a details schedule and map in 1847, which provides a detailed land usage survey. At the time, the island included of saltings, outside the sea wall. The inside the wall comprised of arable land, with pasture covering another. were described as inland water, which was made up of ponds and drainage ditches, while buildings, roads, the sea walls, and some waste ground made up the remaining. The arable land was used to grow cereal crops, namely wheat, oats and barley, and beans, white mustard and clover.Cheap imports of wheat from America caused widespread depression among agricultural communities in the 1870s, with much arable land reverting to rough pasture. However, a map attached to the report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture, which reported in 1894, shows that no land on the island reverted to pasture up to 1880, despite some 25% reverting in the neighbouring Rochford hundred. Great Burwood Farm had of its in use as pasture in 1858, which had dropped to just in 1899. Land prices in the same period dropped dramatically, as the farm was bought for £11,165 in 1858 and sold for only £1,800 in 1899, losing 84% of its value. By the 1970s, the smaller farms had amalgamated into five large farming businesses.
Sea defences
The surface of the island, and much of South East England, has been sinking relative to normal tide levels since the end of the last Ice Age. There is no evidence for sea defences in the period of Roman occupation, although the area was flooded in AD 31 by an exceptional tide, which forced a withdrawal to Shoeburyness. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also records an exceptional tide on 11 November 1099 which flooded the land, but these were rare occurrences. The first defences were probably erected in the late 12th century. By 1210, the "law of the marsh" was in effect: it required that the cost of such defences should be paid for by those who benefited from them, in proportion to the amount of land owned or rented, and this remained the case until the Land Drainage Act 1930. In 1335, 1338 and 1346, commissioners were sent to inspect the state of the banks in the Rochford hundred, which included Foulness.The earliest record of sea walls is from 1271, and in 1348 there were problems with one of the marshes, which was flooding every day, indicating that it was below the level of normal tides. The sea walls were made of earth, and were thatched with hurdles of brushwood and rushes. The island was divided into 11 or 12 marshes, each with its own wall, rather than one wall around the whole area, and was extended in 1420 by a new wall around New Wick Marsh, and again between 1424 and 1486, when Arundel Marsh was enclosed. Ditches ran between the walls of the marshes, with sluices at the ends where the ditches met the sea. At high water, the island would effectively be divided into a number of smaller islands. A Commission of Sewers was appointed in 1695, whose jurisdiction included Foulness, but the inhabitants were not happy, and engaged the lawyer Sir John Brodrick to put their case. They argued that an exceptional high tide had flooded the island in 1690, but that they had repaired and improved the walls themselves, and therefore should not be taxed by the Commissioners. Eventually, Foulness had its own Commission, from 1800 to the early 1900s.
The size of the island has been increased several times by "innings". Saltings build up along the shore from silt which is carried to the sea by the rivers, and is deposited on the shore by the tide. Salt-loving plants then take root in the mud, and the salting is established. The plants trap sediments, and the surface rises until it remains above the level of most tides. Inning occurs when a sea wall is built around the edge of the salting, after which rain washes the salt downwards. The alluvium which forms the soil is highly fertile once freshwater plants start to grow. The inning of New Wick Marsh added, and Arundel March covered. No new innings took place in the 1500s, as there were several exceptional tides, and activity was centred on maintaining the existing defences, but another was added between 1620 and 1662, and there was further activity between 1687 and 1688, in 1801, and finally in 1833. In total, were added to the island.
Development
The Broomway provided the main access to Foulness for centuries. It is an ancient track, which starts at Wakering Stairs, and runs for along the Maplin Sands, some from the present shoreline. The seaward side of the track was defined by bunches of twigs and sticks, shaped like upside-down besom brooms or fire-brooms, which are buried in the sands. Six headways run from the track to the shore, giving access to local farms. The track was extremely dangerous in misty weather, as the incoming tide floods across the sands at high speed, and the water forms whirlpools because of flows from the River Crouch and River Roach. Under such conditions, the direction of the shore cannot be determined, and the parish registers record the burials of many people who were drowned.The island was also served by ferries, which carried fresh water as well as people. The carriage of water is mentioned in the accounts kept by the bailiffs in 1420, 1424 and 1486. By the middle of the 19th century, ferries ran to Burnham-on-Crouch, Potton Island and Wallasea Island. There was initially no source of fresh water on the island apart from any rainwater that could be collected. In 1725, it was thought that there might be water below the island, and a well was constructed on Great Shelford Marsh. It reached a depth of, but no water was found. At the end of the 1700s, Francis Bannester, who owned Rushley Island nearby, attempted to find water by boring, but again failed to do so. However, his son, also called Francis, persisted and found fresh water some below Rushley in 1828. Just six years later, there were more than 20 such springs scattered through the six islands of which Foulness is one, and fourteen farms on the island had their own wells by 1889.
Evidence for housing comes from the census returns. In 1801, 396 people lived in 43 houses, which gives an average occupancy of 9.2 people. This had increased to 9.8 in 1811, when 450 people occupied 46 houses. Ownership of the manor was inherited by George Finch in 1826, who took his responsibilities seriously, and set about improving the island by building brick houses for his tenants. Five years later, 630 people lived in 78 houses, and by 1851, 109 dwellings housed 640 people, with average occupancy down to 5.9 people. Population peaked at 754 in the census of 1871, but has steadily declined since.
Military use
From 1855, the Shoebury Sands, which are a continuation of the Maplin Sands to the south of the island, had been used as an artillery testing site, and the War Office sought to extend this at the end of the 19th century, by buying the island and its offshore sands, to act as a research and development centre for new weapons. They bought some of the sands above Fisherman's Head in 1900, but the rest belonged to Alan Finch, the Lord of the Manor, and he refused to grant shooting rights over them. In 1912, the War Office also discovered that large areas of the sands were leased to tenants, who used them for fishing with kiddles. A kiddle was a large V-shaped or square wicker trap, which formed an enclosure in which fish were trapped as the tide receded.Military takeover
Attempts to buy the lordship were also refused by Finch, but he died in 1914, and his half-brother Wilfred Henry Montgomery Finch sold it on 13 July 1915, resulting in the War Office owning around two-thirds of the island. They had also been buying any farms that were not part of the manor, and by the end of the First World War the only buildings which they did not own were the church and rectory, the school, and a mission hall at Courts End. They demolished the post mill towards the beginning of the war, and the parish poor-house and a wooden lock-up which was located near the church were also demolished.One benefit of the takeover was the construction of the military road in 1922, which crosses New England Island and Havengore Island by a series of bridges, to reach the mainland near Great Wakering. After its opening, the Broomway ceased to be used, except by the military. With the passing of the Ministry of Defence Act 1946 and the subsequent rationalisation of five agencies in 1971, ownership of the island passed from the War Office to the Ministry of Defence. In 2003, a contract to manage the testing of munitions was awarded to the defence contractors QinetiQ, and they also control access to the island.