The land area we now know as St. Osyth has probably suffered with flooding since the end of the last ice age. A great deal of the land edging the Parish is composed of salt marsh and mud flats, which have been a natural flood plain for centuries. As development has taken place so properties have been built in these flood plains without much thought to what might happen if the sea rose abnormally.

Such an event occurred January 31st - February 1^st 1953, the worst weather event of the last century, when a combination of predicted high tide with a deep low pressure area moving south east from Iceland into the north sea and a storm surge, whipped up over ten feet higher than normal by a north westerly hurricane force wind hit the coast, first Scotland then of eastern England. Over 1000 miles of coastline was flooded, over 30,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes and 307 people lost their lives. In Essex alone nearly 50,000 acres of land were flooded and 113 people died.

Jaywick, which had over 1,700 chalet bungalows, of which over 200 were thought to be occupied, was worst hit. The sea wall was broken in 22 places along our bank of the Colne Estuary and water swept around across St. Osyth marches to the back of Jaywick, a direction from which water was not expected, only to be made worse by yet more breaks in the bank along St. Osyth Beach. 35 people were drowned in Jaywick. In Point Clear the two people who ran the grocery store in the Bay were also tragically drowned, after spending time trying to save the stock in their shop before moving to safety.