Facts about Shoeburyness

History

Shoeburyness has two beaches: East Beach and Shoebury Common Beach, both Blue Flag beaches. East Beach is a sandy/pebbly beach around a quarter of a mile long and is sandwiched between the Pig’s Bay MoD site and the former Shoeburyness Artillery barracks. Access to the large gravel/grass pay-and-display car park is via Rampart Terrace. East Beach is the site of a defence boom, built in 1944, to prevent enemy shipping and submarines from accessing the River Thames. This replaced an earlier, similar boom built 100 yards east.

The majority of the boom was dismantled after the war, but around one mile still remains, stretching out into the Thames Estuary. East Beach benefits from a large grassy area immediately adjacent to the sands, which is suitable for informal sports and family fun. Shoeburyness is where, during the Second World War, a magnetic ground mine, which was deposited in the mud at the mouth of the Thames by the Luftwaffe, was discovered by the MoD. Up until that time, various sinkings of ships around the English coast were thought to be due to U-boat torpedoes.

Pop Culture

The English painter J. M. W. Turner depicted the fishermen of Shoeburyness in his oil painting Shoeburyness Fishermen Hailing a Whitstable Hoy. The painting was exhibited in 1809, and was part of a series Turner made of the Thames estuary between 1808 and 1810. The painting has been in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada since 1939. In the fifth Temeraire novel Victory of Eagles, Shoeburyness is the setting of a fictitious climactic battle in which Wellesley and Nelson drive Napoleon out of England in early 1808. Shoeburyness is home to “the commuter”, protagonist in the eponymous song and music video by Ceephax Acid Crew.