Sheerness began as a fort built in the 16th century to protect the River Medway from naval invasion. In 1669 a Royal Navy dockyard was established in the town, where warships were stocked and repaired until its closure in 1960. The town is the site of one of the UK’s first co-operative societies and also of the world’s first multi-storey buildings with a rigid metal frame.
About Sheerness in brief
Sheerness began as a fort built in the 16th century to protect the River Medway from naval invasion. In 1669 a Royal Navy dockyard was established in the town, where warships were stocked and repaired until its closure in 1960. The town is the site of one of the UK’s first co-operative societies and also of the world’s first multi-storey buildings with a rigid metal frame. Sheerness has its origins in Mile Town, which was established later in the 18th century at a mile’s distance from the dockyard. In 1801 the population of the Minster-in-Sheppey parish, which included both Sheerness and the neighbouring town of Minster, reached 5,561. By the end of the 19th century, Sheerness achieved official town status and the new East Light Railway opened connecting the new island with the rest of Sheppey. In the 1901 Census, the town recorded the population as having 18,179 residents and 2,999 houses. The current population of Sheerness is 12,000, making it the largest town on the island. The city is one of Britain’s leading car and fresh produce importers and is a seaside resort with a population of 6,000. It is located on the north-west corner of the Isle of sheppey in north Kent, England, near the mouth of the Medway. It was named after the Nore Command of the Royal Navy, responsible for protecting British waters in the North Sea. In 1863, mains water was installed in Sheerness, about 3 miles east of the Thames Estuary, and the town and the island’s first dock railway station opened at the dock, at Sheerness Light Railway station.
The port is now the largest in the UK and is home to one of England’s largest cruise lines, with more than 1,000 ships and cruise liners based in the area. The Port of Sheerness is the largest port in the world, with 1,500 ships and 1,200,000 passengers a year. It also has the largest number of cruise liner berths in Europe, and is the busiest port on the East Coast of England, with 2,500,000 visitors a year, more than any other port in Britain. It has the second largest population of any town in England, after London, with 7,000 people living in the Port of Dover and 4,000 more in the City of London. The name Sheerness means ‘brightness’ or ‘clearness’ in the local dialect. The first structure in what is now Sheerness was a Fort built by order of Henry VIII to prevent enemy ships from entering the RiverMedway and attacking the naval dockyard at Chatham. The second fort was destroyed in 1667 by the Dutch Naval Fleet as part of what would be known as the raid on the Med Way. By 1738, dockyard construction workers had built the first houses, using materials they were allowed to take from the yard. This led to their homes becoming known as Blue Houses.
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This page is based on the article Sheerness published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
