Potton Island is a sparsely populated island west of

Foulness Foulness Island () is a closed island on the east coast of Essex in England, which is separated from the mainland by narrow creeks. In the 2001 census, the usually resident population of the civil parish was 212, living in the settlements of C ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, England. It is connected to the mainland by a

swing bridge A swing bridge (or swing span bridge) is a movable bridge that has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring, usually at or near to its center of gravity, about which the swing span (turning span) can then pi ...

with a traffic light system, and the road leads to

Great Wakering Great Wakering is a village in the Rochford District in Essex, England. It is approximately four miles east of Southend. The village is well served with several historic public houses, a primary school, a Co-operative supermarket, post office, ...

. Unlike some of the other nearby islands which were formerly

marshland A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...

, Potton Island has been inhabited at least since the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

era. It was home to several arable farms until it flooded in 1884, leading to its temporary abandonment and longer-term use as

pasture Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep, or swine ...

. The island was reclaimed in the 1940s but some time after being acquired by the

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

in 1955 it reverted to pasture. In June 2005, it was disclosed that Potton Island was considered by John Major's Conservative government in the 1980s or 1990s as a potential long-term storage site for high-level nuclear waste. Local government (Southend-on-Sea Borough Council) subsequently expressed their surprise and concern that they had not been party to any consultation on the matter.

External links

Islands of Essex Rochford District {{Essex-geo-stub