Without human intervention during this time salt water flooded parts of the island making it unsuitable for agricultural use. Havergate Island was formerly an extra-parochial area, in 1868 it became a civil parish and by 1961 the parish was unpopulated.
Havergate Island was first walled for land reclamation around 500 years ago and for much of its history has been used for farming. It was used as arable land and for grazing cattle, and at times for smuggling; the last inhabitants left the island at the end of the 1920s.