Blue Town Heritage Centre
About
Blue Town Heritage Centre tells the story of one of the most distinctive working-class communities in England: the historic Blue Town district of Sheerness, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, which grew up around the Royal Navy's Sheerness Dockyard from the seventeenth century onwards. The heritage centre is named for the area's characteristic blue-grey painted buildings, a local tradition said to originate from dockyard workers using surplus naval paint — mixed from tar and blue pigment intended for ships — to coat their own homes and shopfronts cheaply, giving the whole district its enduring nickname and identity.
Sheerness Dockyard was established under Samuel Pepys in the 1660s to defend the Thames and Medway estuary, and grew into a major naval base that built and repaired warships for more than three centuries before its eventual closure in 1960. Blue Town developed immediately outside the dockyard gates as a densely packed community of naval workers, shipwrights, riggers, and their families, evolving its own distinct working-class culture, shops, chapels, and entertainments quite separate from the more genteel Georgian town of Sheerness-on-Sea that grew up nearby.
The heritage centre's displays document this dockyard community across three centuries: the working conditions and skilled trades of dockyard life, the devastating 1917 explosion aboard the ammunition ship SS Richard Montgomery's predecessor incidents and the area's vulnerability to wartime bombing given its strategic naval importance, and the social history of a community that was, for generations, entirely dependent on the fortunes of the dockyard next door. The centre also preserves and interprets the story of the Criterion Music Hall, a building closely associated with the heritage centre that is understood to be among the oldest surviving purpose-built Victorian music halls in England, reflecting the popular entertainment culture that once served the dockyard's workforce.
Run by local volunteers determined to preserve Blue Town's disappearing built heritage and community memory as the area has changed enormously since the dockyard's closure, the centre offers an unusually intimate and specific slice of English social and naval history, rarely covered in national museums, told through the voices and possessions of the community itself.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Check opening days before travelling — this is a small volunteer-run centre and hours can vary, especially outside peak season.
- Ask about access to the Criterion Music Hall when you arrive, as this can vary depending on volunteer availability and ongoing restoration work.
- The volunteers are often long-standing Blue Town residents or connected to former dockyard families — their personal stories add enormously to the visit.
- Bring cash for the small shop and for donations, as card facilities may be limited.
- Combine your visit with a walk around Blue Town's surviving blue-painted streets to see the architecture the museum describes.
- Sheerness town centre, a short walk away, has cafes and shops for refreshments before or after your visit.
- The centre is of particular interest if you have family connections to Sheerness Dockyard or the Royal Navy — ask staff about accessing historical records.
- Photography is generally welcomed inside the centre; ask staff if in doubt regarding any restricted items.
Highlights
Sheerness Dockyard: Three Centuries of Naval History
Displays trace Sheerness Dockyard from its foundation under Samuel Pepys's Navy Board in the 1660s, built to guard the vulnerable approach to the Thames and Medway after the Dutch raid on the Medway in 1667, through its expansion during the Napoleonic Wars and the nineteenth century, to its eventual closure as a naval yard in 1960.
Ship models, photographs, tools, and dockyard records illustrate the scale and skill of an operation that built and repaired warships for the Royal Navy across three centuries of British naval history.
The Story Behind 'Blue Town'
The heritage centre explains the origin of the district's distinctive name and identity: the tradition that dockyard workers used surplus Royal Navy paint — a blue-grey mix of tar and pigment intended for ships' hulls and fittings — to cheaply coat their own houses, shops, and chapels, giving the whole community its lasting nickname.
Photographs of the blue-painted streets from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show a uniquely identifiable urban landscape shaped directly by naval industry.
The Criterion Music Hall
The heritage centre is closely associated with the Criterion Music Hall, understood to be among the oldest surviving purpose-built Victorian music halls in England, constructed to provide popular entertainment for the dockyard's large workforce. Displays and, where access is available, the hall itself illustrate the raucous variety entertainment culture that once thrived in Blue Town, a rare surviving physical link to Victorian working-class leisure history.
Dockyard Trades and Working Life
The specialist trades of dockyard work — shipwrights, riggers, caulkers, blacksmiths, and sailmakers among them — are documented through tools, photographs, and oral history recordings of former dockyard workers and their families, conveying the skill, danger, and camaraderie of working life inside one of the Royal Navy's principal home dockyards.
Collections
Blue Town Heritage Centre holds a locally focused but historically significant collection documenting Sheerness Dockyard and the surrounding Blue Town community across more than three centuries. The collection includes ship models, dockyard tools and equipment, photographs donated by local families, oral history recordings, ephemera relating to the Criterion Music Hall and Blue Town's entertainment culture, and material relating to the area's wartime experience.
Much of the collection has been assembled directly from the community it documents, giving it a strongly personal and grassroots character distinct from official naval museum collections elsewhere in Kent, and the centre continues to actively collect photographs, objects, and testimony from residents and former dockyard families.
Sheerness Dockyard and the Making of Blue Town
The full story of the Royal Navy dockyard and the distinctive working-class community that grew up around it.
📍 Main Galleries
The Criterion: Music Hall Heritage
The history of the Criterion Music Hall and Blue Town's popular entertainment culture.
📍 Criterion Music Hall
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.