For most of the 1800s, oysters were Burnham’s gold. The riverbed belonged to the Mildmay family, and the beds were rented out, guarded day and night, and sometimes raided.

“Burnham River” and the five Johns

The biggest oyster business was John Rogers & Co., trading as “Burnham River”. It was started around 1780 by five men who were all called John: Rogers, Auger, Sweeting, Gilson and Hawkins. Smaller layings were worked by the Rogers, Hawkins, Smith, Auger and Sweeting families, and by the Bowtens, Wisemans and Brownings.

How Belvedere Road got its name

Oysters were watched round the clock: from the shore, from boats moored in the river, and from a lookout tower called the Belvedere at the end of Workhouse Lane. The tower is gone, but the lane became Belvedere Road.

The Workhouse that gave the lane its first name stood there too. It was where many people who fell on hard times ended up.

The hat on a stick

Old oystermen told how the bosses would walk the sea wall at night to check their watchmen were awake. On shore there was no getting away with it. Afloat in midstream, though, a sleepy watchman would prop his hat on a stick so it just showed above the side of the boat. Nobody could tell if there was a head under it, and that included would-be thieves, so the oysters stayed safe while he had his nap.

When the guards were the poachers

During the wars with France, local watermen served in the Sea Fencibles, a sort of part-time naval home guard. Burnham’s Fencibles seem to have used their official exercises as a chance to poach oysters from the Mildmay beds, and in 1808 they were taken to court for it. One of them, a man named Allen, argued that the beds were common ground. He lost.

If the French had come, the Fencibles would have manned the river’s defences: two 24-pounder guns opposite the mouth of the Roach.

Boom and bust

When the lease came up in 1810, Burnham River paid £1,050 a year to keep it. By 1900 the rent was about £1,700, which shows how valuable the oysters were. Soon after 1900 the industry collapsed, wiped out by limpets and other pests.