Temperance isle

The estuary’s other large island is the now privately-owned Osea. It is connected to the north bank by a causeway originally built by the Romans. Later, it was owned by Frederick Charrington, of the brewing family. But he found a new use for Osea after what he called his ‘Damascene conversion’. In 1869, while walking through London’s Whitechapel, he witnessed a woman with her children begging her husband to leave a public house and give her money to buy food. The furious husband knocked her into the gutter. Charrington went to help and was also pushed to the ground. Looking up, he saw his family name on the sign above the pub. “Here was the source of my family wealth, and it was producing untold human misery before my own eyes,” he later wrote. “Then and there, I pledged to God that not another penny of that money should come to me.” Charrington swore off alcohol and became a social reformer. In 1903, he purchased Osea and turned it into a refuge where he could treat people with alcoholism. He also kept a menagerie of animals, including kangaroos. During the First World War, Osea became a secret naval base from which torpedo boats would attack German shipping. Afterwards, it reverted to farmland.