The Broomway The Broomway The Broomway is a public right of way over the foreshore at Maplin Sands off the coast of Essex, England. Most of the route is classed as a Byway Open to All Traffic, with a shorter section of bridleway. When the tide is out, it provides access to Foulness Island, and indeed was the only access to Foulness on foot, and the only access at low tide, until a road bridge was built over Havengore Creek in 1922. At least 598 years old, recorded as early as 1419, the Broomway runs for along the Maplin Sands, some from
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