A crossing before the modern road
The B1025 crosses the tidal marshes by a causeway whose earliest surviving timberwork dates to the late seventh century. For centuries the road has been raised and repaired as the water and traffic continued to damage it. Excavation and parish accounts give different kinds of evidence for its history.
The discovery of an early medieval timber foundation changed the earlier assumption that the substantial causeway had been built by the Romans. An older ford preceded it, but its exact form and date have not been established from the surviving piles.
The 1978 excavation
In 1978 a water-main trench exposed lines of oak piles near the island end of the Strood, extending along about 60 metres of the excavation. Dendrochronology dated the timber structure to AD 684–702. The piles had been sealed beneath later phases of the road.
Colchester Archaeological Trust published the evidence in 1982. It established an Anglo-Saxon phase of construction, not the date of the first passage across the marsh.
Colchester Archaeological Trust research ↗
The scale of the early crossing
The seventh-century timber foundation was a major engineering undertaking. Researchers at University College London estimate that the causeway was supported by around 15,000 oak piles, with two timbers dated to the late seventh century, around AD 692. The crossing runs for about half a mile over tidal marsh, and its road surface was raised and rebuilt repeatedly. The evidence does not identify who ordered the work, although its construction falls within the period of the East Saxon kingdom.
The Strood had keepers
Sixteenth-century parish records survive for the maintenance of the crossing. Accounts transcribed by Mersea Museum name elected “keepers of the Strood” and record money received from Strood land as well as expenditure on piles, planks, stone, gravel and labour.
The 1620 repair accounts
The 1620 Strood accounts record payments for driving five loads of piles, bringing gravel by fishing boat, carrying forty loads of gravel to the crossing and transporting tree loppings to the water side. The total recorded expenditure was £8 11s 2d.
Strood repair accounts of 1620 ↗
How maintenance was funded
The surviving accounts show rents from parcels of Strood land feeding into maintenance money. Later sixteenth-century entries record annual receipts and the handover of balances when new Strood keepers were chosen.
Widening in 1931
The Strood was widened in 1931. Photographs taken before and during the work show the earlier narrow road, repairs to the railings and the traffic using the tidal crossing before the modern carriageway.
The old problem is still the modern problem
High tides still cover the modern road on some occasions. Its past repairs explain why the crossing has long required maintenance, but historic flood accounts cannot be used to judge whether it is safe to travel today.
Current Strood and tide guide →
A preserved oak post
One of the oak posts is preserved in Mersea Museum.