MAPLIN SAND
The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales...., by John Marius Wilson. circa 1866
MAPLIN SAND, a shoal or foreshore on the Essex side of the estuary of the Thames; extending from Southend 7 miles eastward to Shoeburyness. A lighthouse is on its SE side; was erected in 1841; and shows a fixed light, visible at a distance of 10 miles. The sand of which the shoal or foreshore consists was alleged, by the promoters of the new metropolitan sewage scheme, to be well suited, with aid of sewage irrigation, to produce luxuriant crops of grass; and an experiment was made in 1866 to test its properties, by removing 3,000 tons of it in barges to the vicinity of the outfall reservoir at Barking-creek, spreading it there over an acre of land and fertilizing it exclusively with sewage; and the experiment proved eminently successful.
Transcribed by Noel Clark