SCOT’S TWENTY WIVES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19278, 16 September 1924, Page 5

SCOT’S TWENTY WIVES.

QUAINT CRUSOE ISLAND

TWO HOURS FROM LONDON.

LIFE IN LONELY WALLASEA. How many Londoners know that bv taking a two hours’ journey from London, by train and rowing boat, they may enjoy a very good imitation of Robinson Crusoe’s adventure, and then return at night to the comforts of civilisation? Take a map of Essex, says a recent writer in describing this secluded spot, and follow the course of the River Crouch up from its mouth between Holliwell Point and Foulness Point. Look where the River Roach empties itse.lf into the Crouch, and notice how the arms of the two streams almost meet round a piece of land marked as Wallasea Island. The slight neck of land where the two rivers fail to meet is Wallasea's only connection landwards. At high tide the brackish waters wash over tins road, which carries the telegraph poles to the island. Dotted about on the pasture land, which is protected from flood by a low sea-wall, are a few isolated farms, which support a population of about a hundred, including many children. PARADISE FOR CHILDREN. Formerly there was a little school on Wallasea Island, with a resident school mistress. In November, 1897, great floods swept the little island, and many people fled in terror, and did not go back. Among those who left the island was the school mistress. The school was shut up and has never been reopened. A cart collects about 20 children even - morning and takes them inland to Canewdcn to school. But there are children at present living on the island who have never been to school, and their private opinion' is that they will never go. It is possible to enjoy a thrill of very real loneliness on this piece of land 3£ miles long and 2£ broad, which owes its agricultural possibilities to the fine drainage system put in by Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century. By standing on the grassgrown summit of the sea-wall, with his back to Burnham and its yachts, the visitor can look out over acres of rosy-tinted grass land, which must look very much as it did when the Danish King Canute and the English Edmund Ironside fought bitterly at Canewdon for the rich realm of England. IN FIVE DIFFERENT PARISHES. There is no church at Wallasea, which lies in the five different parishes of Canewdon, Paglesham, Stanbridgc, Wnkering, and Eastwood. There is no village, only individual houses with such names as Tile Barn Grass Farm, New Pool, Old Pool, and Grapjicll. , To add to the general tranquility of the place, so far as can be discovered Wallasea is a place without a history. It dreams on unheeding of tho yeais .which have passed over its maishes since they first came out of the sea. With much stirring up of memory, some of the older inhabitants seem to remember something about a Scotchman who aettled on the island more than 100 years ago, and who sent to Scotland for 20 wives in turn as each woman died of ague! That 'Scotchman's record seems to be the only memory of Wallasea.