Saint Mary the Virgin, Foulness Island Saint Mary the Virgin, Foulness Island Saint Mary the Virgin is a parish of the Church of England on Foulness Island, in Essex, England. Before the 15th century, the island of Foulness was divided among several neighbouring parishes. The inhabitants were expected to attend church services in their respective mainland parish churches but in practice this must have been difficult and at times impossible, as in those days there was no bridge linking Foulness to the mainland. In 1407, Lady Joan de Bohun, Countess of Essex, obtained a licence from the Bishop of London to found a chantry of a
Foulness Island square miles, with a population of 600,000 people. The cost was to be a then-astronomical £825 million (£8,448 million today), which many regarded as unacceptable. The Maplin project was abandoned in July 1974 when Labour came to power in the shadow of the 1973 oil crisis. Most of the island was flooded in 1953, as a result of exceptional weather conditions which affected much of the Netherlands and the east coast of England. High water at Southend was expected to be above mean sea level at 1:30 am on Sunday 1 February. The actual tide rose to above mean sea