SOUTHEND and the Oyster Industry

It was the industry of oyster raising which first brought into being the village of Southend. As a name it had appeared as early as the fifteenth century - "Southende" occurs in the parish of St. Mary of Prittlewell in a will dated 1481 - but at that time, and until the early eighteenth century, the site of the present day Southend was mainly agricultural land, its few inhabitants being occupied in farm work and fishing.

Oyster cultivation at this spot did not develop until about the year 1700. It was then that a fisherman named Outing discovered by accident the value of the foreshore at Southchurch as a feeding ground for oysters. The business he began prospered, and others quickly followed his example. By 1724 practically the whole of the foreshore, from Shoebury to Hadleigh, was devoted to the cultivation of oysters.

From this activity emerged the small village of Southend. The industry itself flourished during the eighteenth century, but there was no place for it in the new life of Southend, and the cultivation of oysters on a large scale came to an end there in the second half of the nineteenth century.

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