It is located between the River Roach and the adjoining Borough of Southend-on-Sea, and includes the hamlet of Shopland.

It has a population of 127,[1] increasing at the 2011 Census to 135,[2] the smallest in the District, although at the time of the Domesday Book it had a flourishing village with its own market and fair.

[4] The place-name 'Shopland' is first attested in a list of c. 1000 AD of the manors of St Paul's Cathedral in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (MS. 383), where it appears as Scopingland.

[8] When the nearby Shopland church was demolished in 1957, due to partial ruin from the Second World War, a medieval coffin lid and brass, dated to 1371, of Sir Thomas Stapel, Sergeant at Arms to Edward III, was moved to All Saints' Church in 1971.

[3] All Saints' Church was declared redundant and permissible for secular use in 2015,[10] and the brass and slab were moved again to St Andrew's Church in nearby Rochford, Essex in 2018, where they were set into the internal north wall of the tower.