2020 saw the first pandemic hit our country for a hundred years. But our country has been home to many serious diseases in the past, including one of the world's biggest killers, malaria.

Described as "The Ague", it is mentioned in Chaucer and Shakespeare as well as many other sources, and was a major cause of serious illness and death until well into the 19th Century. Malaria is not viral or bacterial, it is caused by a parasite spread by mosquitoes.

Britain's indigenous mosquito.

The mosquitoes which transmit malaria favour brackish water along river estuaries. The salt marshes of the Dengie peninsula have famously been described as a major source of the disease in the past.

Daniel Defoe offers the best-known account of malaria in the Dengie:

"Our London men of pleasure go from London on purpose for the pleasure of shooting, but those gentlemen who go so far for it often return with an Essex Ague on their backs, which they find a heavier load than the fowls they have shot." Defoe had travelled extensively between 1685 and 1690, describing his adventures in 'A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain'. He also describes local farmers having multiple marriages, having acquired some immunity to the disease themselves:

"It was very frequent to meet with men that had had from five to six, to fourteen of fifteen wives… they being bred in the marshes themselves, and seasoned to the place, did pretty well with it; but that they always went into the hilly country for a wife… when they came out of their native aire into the marshes… they presently changed their complexion, got an ague or two, and seldom held it above half a year, or a year at most; and then [the men] would go to the uplands again, and fetch another."

This begs several questions – did local women not develop some immunity? Were they not attractive to the farmers? And just how tempting would a marriage proposal from a Dengie farmer be for those outside the area?

Warm dry summers which created pools of stagnant water create the best breeding grounds for mosquitos. A study of burial rates at Bradwell-Juxta-Mare between 1660 and 1810 showed a direct link between rates of burial and hot summers. A 17th Century report on Burnham says the air was "rather more healthy… owing to the marshes being fewer and less offensive."

Before Quinine, the commonest "cures" for the Ague were alcohol and opium (known as Laudenum in its medicinal form). The two could be combined, and some Essex pubs were known for their opium-laced beer.

Malaria still kills over 400,000 people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa. Climate scientists fear that global warming will see it return to countries that have not seen it for some time, including England.

But in spite of newspaper headlines like, 'It bites, it kills, it's coming to Essex' and 'The mozzies are coming', health experts do not expect the return of mosquitoes to mean the uncontrolled return of malaria: its disappearance was much more to do with better housing, freely available quinine, and the draining of marshes.

So "upland" brides can safely contemplate marriage to Dengie grooms for the foreseeable future.