The Broomway

[3] At over 600 years old, recorded as early as 1419, the Broomway runs for 6 miles (9.7 km) along the Maplin Sands, approximately 440 yards (400 m) from the present shoreline.

[5] It has also been surmised to be an Anglo-Saxon era drove route, again subsequently inundated due to coastal erosion[6] or 14th century storm surges[7] but maintained using local knowledge and temporary waymarks.

[8] Noted in 1419, the route was mentioned in the following century by William Harrison in the Chronicles of Holinshed, who said that a man could ride to Foulness "if he be skilful of the causie [causeway]".

In 1769, a guidebook stated that "the passage into [Foulness] is at low water, and on horseback, insomuch that many, either in negligence, or being in liquor, have been overtaken by the tide and drowned".

[13] The author Herbert W. Tompkins, who walked the Broomway in the early 1900s, described how as the tide ebbed the brooms would "lift their heads and appear as a line of black dots",[14] providing an indication of when the traveller might start their journey.

[11] At night, when the "brooms" could be harder to spot, locals were accustomed to using the lights of the Nore, Mouse, and Swin lightvessels and the Maplin lighthouse to help judge their position.

Writing in 1901, the Essex author Reginald A. Beckett described "one of the most curious sights [he] ever beheld" as "when reaching the Stairs just before dark, there appeared a procession of market-carts coming from Foulness and rapidly driven across the sands, through water about a foot deep, with two or three fishing-smacks beyond and a distant steamer on the horizon".

[2][17] It has earned this reputation by virtue of the disorientating nature of its environment in poor visibility, and near inevitability of death by drowning for anyone still out on the sands when the tide comes in.

[19] Writing in 1867, the Rochford historian Philip Benton described the risks for those without a guide, and said that others succumbed to the "pleasurable excitement" of the dangers: "some farmers would stay [on the mainland] to the last, and then race the tide, and swim the creeks.

[25] From the Maypole, the road takes a more northerly route of approximately 50 degrees (magnetic) to the causeway leading to Asplins Head, the first of the surviving highways onto Foulness Island.