What town was the Admiralty House located?
The first structure in what is now Sheerness was a fort built by order of Henry VIII to prevent enemy ships from entering the River Medway and attacking the naval dockyard at Chatham. In 1666 work began to replace it with a stronger fort. However, before its completion, this second fort was destroyed during the 1667 Dutch Naval Fleet as part of what would be known as the raid on the Medway.The Secretary to the Admiralty, Samuel Pepys, subsequently ordered the construction of Sheerness Dockyard as an extension to that at Chatham. There was no established settlement in the vicinity of Sheerness, so most of the workers were initially housed in hulks. By 1738, dockyard construction workers had built the first houses in Sheerness, using materials they were allowed to take from the yard. The grey-blue naval paint they used on the exteriors led to their homes becoming known as the Blue Houses. This was eventually corrupted to Blue Town (which is now the name of the north-west area of Sheerness lying just beyond the current dockyard perimeter). The modern town of Sheerness has its origins in Mile Town, which was established later in the 18th century at a mile's distance from the dockyard (Blue Town having by then filled the space available).In 1797, discontented sailors in the Royal Navy mutinied just off the coast of Sheerness.
In 2003, the Beachfields Park project was organised to publicise Beachfields' heritage and to preserve it for future generations. Students of Cheyne Middle School and Minster College, with assistance from local organisations, researched the funfair, bandstands, Prisoner of the War hut, boating lake and bowling green. As part of the project, students wrote a book, Tales of Beachfields Park, which won the Historical Association Young Historian Primary School Award for Local History.
As of 2007, Bluetown is an industrial area, and Sheerness has become the largest port in the UK for motor imports. Prior to the closure of the Dockyard, twenty-five of its historic buildings were listed in recognition of their "architectural distinction and value"; regardless of this, the majority were subsequently demolished (including Admiralty House and the quadrangular Great Store) and others were left to decay. In the early 21st century a concerted effort was made to save the remaining buildings and several have been restored to residential use. In July 2013 Swale Borough Council announced that a deal had been reached to secure restoration of Rennie and Taylor's Royal Dockyard Church (which had been gutted by a fire in 2001), with a view to new uses such as displaying the above-mentioned model of the Dockyard.
Sheerness