The Sheerness Dockyard Trust is pleased to announce its 2024 Annual General Meeting - to be held in the meeting rooms at the  Dockyard Church.

Saturday 23 November 2024, 3.00pm - 4.30pm at Dockyard Church, Sheerness

ADVANCE BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL ~ Click here to register for the event

Places are limited and tickets will be allocated on a first come first serve basis.

Please note the building is now open and operational. The cafe will be open for refreshments.

This year's AGM will be a chance to see the Church in operation as 'Island Works', and see interiors of this award winning building.  (RICS Project of the Year 2024)

The building is now IslandWorks - an enterprise centre with cafe and display of elements of the great Dockyard Model, open 9-5pm Monday - Saturday. 

The Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust (SDPT) was founded in 2014 to campaign for the preservation of the historic buildings in and around the former Royal Naval Dockyard at Sheerness, on the north-western tip of the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. The Trust's first project was the rescue and restoration of the magnificent but derelict Grade II* listed Dockyard Church at the entrance to the commercial port. 

Our Funders

A £5.3m grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has been matched with over £4m of grants from some of the UK’s leading philanthropic trusts, foundations and individuals including:

• Historic England

• Julia and Hans Rausing

• Colyer-Fergusson Charitable Trust

• Lund Trust

• Garfield Weston Foundation

• The Sackler Trust

• The Foyle Foundation

• Benefact Trust

• Art Fund_

• The Linbury Trust

• Wolfson Foundation

• The Linbury Trust

• Henry Oldfield Trust

• The Swire Charitable Trust

• Bernard Sunley Foundation

• Kent Community Foundation (David and Molly Lowell Borthwick)

• Pilgrim Trust

• The Architectural Heritage Fund

• Roger de Haan Charitable Trust

• The Rothschild Foundation

• Peter Stormonth Darling Charitable Trust

• Naval Dockyards Society

• Sheerness Town Council

• The Marks Family Charitable Trust

• Louis Greig (Alligator Trust)

• Marsh Charitable Trust

• Rainham Historical Society

• Dominic & Sarah Caldecott

• Marian Boswall

• Alan Baxter

DOCKYARD CHURCH: A BRIEF HISTORY

Dockyard Church, Sheerness, was built in the 1820s to serve the officers and workers of the newly constructed Royal Naval Dockyard. The architect was George Ledwell Taylor – surveyor to the Admiralty and designer of another famous Kent landmark, Hadlow Tower. Ledwell Taylor worked to a masterplan by the great engineer John Rennie. Rennie had prepared the site of the dockyard by driving in millions of timber piles into the marshy coastal ground. His state of the art dry docks and basins and mast house were the envy of the engineering world. 

The church continued in use for a time after the closure of the Naval Dockyard in 1960, before becoming a sports facility and later a store. In 2001 it was gutted by fire. In 2013 it was acquired by Swale Borough Council under compulsory purchase powers and vested in the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust. In 2015 ownership was formally transferred to the Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust. Restoration work began at the Church in 2020 - completing in the summer of 2023.

Site Updates

The Dockyard Story

The Dockyard Model