Foulness Island passing of the Ministry of Defence Act 1946 and the subsequent rationalisation of five agencies in 1971, ownership of the island passed from the War Office to the Ministry of Defence. In 2003, a contract to manage the testing of munitions was awarded to the defence contractors QinetiQ, and they also control access to the island. In the 1850s, the South Essex Estuary and Reclamation Company proposed a grand scheme to reclaim around of land on the Essex coast, which would have included most of Foulness Sands and Maplin Sands. The civil engineer Sir John Rennie produced the plans, and
Foulness Island below the island, and a well was constructed on Great Shelford Marsh. It reached a depth of , but no water was found. At the end of the 1700s, Francis Bannester, who owned Rushley Island nearby, attempted to find water by boring, but again failed to do so. However, his son, also called Francis, persisted and found fresh water some below Rushley in 1828. Just six years later, there were more than 20 such springs scattered through the six islands of which Foulness is one, and fourteen farms on the island had their own wells by 1889. Evidence for housing