Why Essex Has an Island Nobody's Allowed to Visit

There is an island off the Essex coast with two villages, a church and about 150 residents, and you can only visit it on one Sunday a month, along one road, past a military checkpoint. Foulness has been in the army's hands since the First World War. The War Office only got it after the lord of the manor, who refused to sell, died in 1915. After that it became a weapons range, and a building there was used to assemble Britain's first atomic device in 1952. The island also survived the 1953 flood and a 1970s plan to bury it under London's third airport. And before the army built its road, the only way on foot was the Broomway, a tidal path that drowned more than a hundred people. In this video: The Broomway, Britain's deadliest footpath The landowner who told the War Office no Foulness's secret role in Britain's atomic bomb The night the sea came in, 1953 The airport that nearly wiped the island off the map Life behind the gate today Subscribe for more of Britain's hidden and forgotten history every week. #Foulness #HiddenHistory #Essex