Minster, Swale

In the early 20th century the island was hit by speculative builders and Minster suffered equally with Sheerness. After the Second World War the population of the village had swollen "from about 250 people in 100 homes to 5,500 people in 1,800 homes". During the Second World War the Shoeburyness Boom, which ran across the Thames Estuary to protect shipping from submarine attack, ran from Royal Oak Point (near Minster) to Shoeburyness in Essex. A similar structure was built along the same alignment in the early 1950s to protect against Soviet submarines. The Royal Oak Point end of the boom was demolished in the 1960s. In 1961 the civil parish called "Minster in Sheppey" had a population of…