Rushley Island is a small

uninhabited island A desert island, deserted island, or uninhabited island, is an island, islet or atoll that is not permanently populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotype ...

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 Grea ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It is the smallest of six islands comprising an

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...

in Essex, and is privately owned. A seawall was first constructed in the 1780s by John Harriott, and the island has been the object of farming activities since then. The local racehorse trainer and one-time Rushley Island owner, Frank Threadgold, once bred a horse which he named after the island. Born in 1976 she was a bay mare with horseracing parents called Crooner and Vicki Ann. She was later trained at the famous Newmarket track by Mr. H. C. Westbrook and was entered as a two-year-old for four races, mainly over a distance of six furlongs, between September and November 1978. These took place at Yarmouth, Lingfield (twice) and Doncaster. Unfortunately she was not a tremendously successful racehorse, finishing, at best, second from last in all these races, and she was retired for breeding purposes back into the ownership of the Threadgold family at Southend-on-Sea, who have farmed land at nearby Great Wakering since the 1930s. Sadly, she did not prove to be too successful at breeding either, although she did have one colt, a bay called Tudor Rhythm, in 1980, which was never raced. In 1987 she was officially retired from stud and disappeared from the record books."Islands of Essex"
by Ian Yearsley, p.75

References

Islands of Essex Uninhabited islands of England Rochford District Private islands of the United Kingdom {{Essex-geo-stub