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Garrison Road, SHEERNESS, ME12 1ED

The Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust is working to repair and transform [the] Dockyard Church, which stands at the entrance to the former Royal Dockyard on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. The church, which was badly damaged by fire in 2001, is an architectural masterpiece and one of the most important buildings at risk in the south east of England. In 2017, the Dockyard Church Project was awarded a provisional £4.75m grant by the National Lottery Fund, with £500,000 to develop a community-led project for transforming the building as a hub for business, arts and tourism that will help put Sheerness back on the map https://sheernessdockyardpt.org.uk/ This image shows the Image just over three years ago.

The church was built in 1826-8 as part of the comprehensive redevelopment of the Sheerness Royal Naval Dockyard between 1813 and 1830. The architect of many of its buildings, including the church, was George Ledwell Taylor, Surveyor of Buildings to the Navy from 1824. The church is an austere neo-classical design with a tetrastyle Ionic portico. It was gutted by fire in 1881 and substantially rebuilt within the masonry envelope, more or less to the original concept, in 1884-5. It was again gutted by fire in 2001. It is listed grade II*. The Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust is working to repair and transform the Church.

The burnt out church is next to Naval Terrace

According to http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=2b120432-1517-47c7-8aeb-9d8101c042af Sheerness Dockyard Church was reduced to a shell after a fire in 2001. No restoration work was in progress in spite of a Portakabin having been erected and the site surrounded, on this side, by a high security fence.

In 2014, the Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Society secured a Start-Up grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to make the structure safe again and begin the transformation of the derelict church into a community resource and enterprise centre for the Isle of Sheppey http://sheernessdockyardpt.org.uk/ If you click on “Dockyard Church ready to welcome visitors” on the Home Page, under Resources, the date of the open day (17/09/14) will be revealed. Matthew Brown sent me an email via http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3160157 about this date, so this was the reason for my visit. The board in this view gave me the website address.

No restoration work seemed to have been carried out on Image since last September but having accessed http://sheernessdockyardpt.org.uk/ I clicked on “Hiring Conservation Architect/Surveyor” and saw that The Trust is seeking an experienced architect or surveyor to carry out a comprehensive survey of the condition of the building’s fabric. Following the conclusion of this survey work, a further application will be made to fund the works recommended by this report. Responses are to be sent by email to the Dockyard Church by 17:00 on 12 October 2015 http://sheernessdockyardpt.org.uk/index.php/2015/09/24/we-are-hiring/ Perhaps this is the reason why.

According to http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=2b120432-1517-47c7-8aeb-9d8101c042af Sheerness Dockyard Church was reduced to a shell after a fire in 2001. I visited the church, especially, in the hope of seeing restoration in progress but none was being carried out.