The two villages remained small rural settlements until the 1850s, when a barracks was established in the parish of South Shoebury, later becoming MoD Shoeburyness.

A garrison town, known as Shoeburyness, grew around the barracks, taking its name from the ness on the coast at the southern end of the parish.

Development during the twentieth century saw the formerly separate settlements of Shoeburyness and North Shoebury absorbed into the built-up area of Southend.

The first record of occupation in Shoebury has been found from the Mesolithic period, with Neolithic and Bronze Age stone tools and Beaker pottery having also been discovered.

[2] An Iron Age settlement has been found, that had ramparts that were believed to be originally 40ft wide and 12ft tall, with evidence of round houses, ditches and Postholes that is now a Scheduled Monument.

[2] The Romans built a fortified settlement called Essobira at the Ness, that was attacked by the British in AD50 under Caratacus and later by Boudica's rebels.

[3] The Saxons re-established a settlement in the 6th century, which at this point that the name Shoebury, or in Anglo-Saxon Scobrih, or in Danish, Scabivig was first documented.

[3] Shoebury (North and South were recorded as one) was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086, having a population of 33 and sitting within the control of the Rochford Hundred.

The land was owned by three different people, Walter; Bishop Odo of Bayeux and the Swein of Essex, son of Robert FitzWimarc.

[10] South Shoebury was prone to flooding and Marsh fever, and in 1530 the parish had to sell St Andrew's bells to pay for repairs to the sea defences.

The growth in population was caused by the opening of nearby brickfields by the Frapping family,[14] and the construction of the Artillery Barracks that was the start of Shoebury Garrison.

[17] The town was described by the military historian Patrick Barry as a dreary place... the broadest and most sterile foreshore perhaps in England[18] It was home to the last recorded case of indigenous malaria in the British Isles during the 1930s.

[20] In between the two World Wars, Shoeburyness became a popular holiday resort, with a blacksmiths sitting next to the beach until the 1930s being a regular source of entertainment.

[12] At the beginning of the Second World War, the depositing of a magnetic ground mine in the mud at the mouth of the Thames by the Luftwaffe was observed at Shoeburyness.

Various sinkings of ships near the English coast in the preceding months were thought by many to be due to U-boat torpedoes, though the Admiralty suspected magnetic mines were being used.

[21] The heroic recovery of an intact mine on 23 November 1939, by Lieutenant Commanders Ouvry and Lewis from HMS Vernon made it possible for the Navy to study it and devise countermeasures to neutralise it; among these were the degaussing cables installed in merchant ships in Allied and British fleets, and, of course, wooden minesweepers.

[22] East Beach is the site of a defence boom, built in 1944, to prevent enemy shipping and submarines from accessing the River Thames.

[25] Before any development took place, Essex County Council Archaeology Section of the Planning Department and Southend Museum started the North Shoebury Project in 1980 under the guidance of John Wymer, whose digs established that the area had continuous human habitation from the Mesolithic period.

[33] Shoebury Common Beach is bounded to the east by the land formerly occupied by the Shoeburyness Artillery barracks and by Thorpe Bay to the west.

[49][50][11][51] Shoeburyness is part of the Southend East and Rochford constituency, and the current serving Member of Parliament is Bayo Alaba.

[67][68] In the fifth Temeraire novel Victory of Eagles (2008) by Naomi Novik, Shoeburyness is the setting of a fictitious climactic battle in which Wellesley and Nelson drive Napoleon out of England in early 1808.

[70] Shoeburyness is one of the better-known entrants in Douglas Adams' and John Lloyd's 1990 spoof dictionary The Deeper Meaning of Liff.