page_title: The Broomway
section_title: Navigation and access
hierarchical_section_title: The Broomway / Navigation and access
caption_attribution_description: English: A view along the Broomway during a pre 1922 trip by the Essex Field Club, showing a fingerpost at a "headway" and one of the 400 "brooms" visible to the right of the carriage.
context_page_description: 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 over 600 years old, recorded as early as 1419, the Broomway runs for 6 miles along the Maplin Sands, some 440 yards from the present shoreline. It was named for the "brooms", bundles of twigs attached to short poles, with which the route was once marked. A number of headways or hards ran from the track to the shore, giving access to local farms. The track is extremely dangerous in misty weather, as the incoming tide floods across the sands at high speed, and the water forms whirlpools because of flows from the River Crouch and River Roach. Under such conditions, the direction of the shore cannot be determined. After the road bridge was opened in 1922, the Broomway ceased to be used, except by the military.
context_section_description: The Broomway leaves the mainland at Wakering Stairs, where there is a causeway over the band of soft mud (known as the Black Grounds or blackgrounds) which separates the mainland from the firmer ground of the Maplin Sands.  Once upon the Maplin Sands, the Broomway heads approximately 60 degrees (magnetic) towards a navigation beacon known as "the Maypole". This beacon marks the entrance to Havengore Creek. Beyond this point, travellers once had to also wade across the mouths of New England Creek and then Shelford Creek, until both were dammed in the 1920s. From the Maypole the road takes a more northerly route of approximately 50 degrees (magnetic) to the causeway leading to Asplins Head, the first of the surviving highways onto Foulness Island.  From Wakering Stairs to Asplins Head is a walk of about one hour.  
  Since the opening of the bridge to the island, and the loss of the "brooms", the Broomway is now largely unmarked.  There is no actual track, and for the majority of its six-mile route the Broomway is nothing more than a compass bearing over Maplin Sands.
  The "headways", or access points leading from the Broomway to farms on the shoreline, were  mostly constructed of Kentish ragstone or gravel. Although a number are still marked on maps, the majority are currently impassable. From south to north, the main headways are or were:
  Suttons Head or Kennets Head, near Shoeburyness East Beach, which fell into disuse in 1867 after the reopening of Wakering Stairs
  King's Head, near Pig's Bay, also lost
  Wakering Stairs, the current access point
  Havengore Island; three former headways including Havengore Head and Sharpsness Head
  New England Island, now lost
  Shelford Head, now lost
  New Burwood Head, now lost
  Asplins Head
  Rugwood Head, now impassable
  Eastwick or Pattisons Head
  Fishermans Head, still periodically used by the MOD: its concreted surface remains the only way of getting heavy loads onto the island
  From Rugwood Head to Fishermans Head, the Broomway is technically classed as a bridleway rather than a byway.
  Access to the Broomway is restricted because both the mainland at Wakering Stairs and Foulness Island itself are given over to military purposes.
caption: A view along the Broomway during a pre-1922 trip by the Essex Field Club, showing a fingerpost at a "headway" and one of the 400 "brooms" visible to the right of the carriage.
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