Find the word definition

Crossword clues for sheerness

Wiktionary
sheerness

n. 1 (context uncountable English) The property of being sheer. 2 (context countable rare English) The result or product of being sheer.

Wikipedia
Sheerness

Sheerness is a town located beside the mouth of the River Medway on the north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 13,000 it is the largest town on the island.

Sheerness began as a fort built in the 16th century to protect the River Medway from naval invasion. In 1665, plans were first laid by the Navy Board for a Royal Navy dockyard where warships might be provisioned and repaired, a site favoured by Samuel Pepys, then Clerk of the Acts of the navy, for shipbuilding over Chatham. After the raid on the Medway in 1667, the older fortification was strengthened; in 1669 a Royal Navy dockyard was established in the town, where warships were stocked and repaired until its closure in 1960.

Beginning with the construction of a pier and a promenade in the 19th century, Sheerness acquired the added attractions of a seaside resort. Industry retains its important place in the town and the Port of Sheerness is one of the United Kingdom's leading car and fresh produce importers. The town is the site of one of the UK's first co-operative societies and also of the world's first multi-storey building with a rigid metal frame.

Usage examples of "sheerness".

There was an end, at last, to the dizzy gyrations of the hole mto which they were packed, and the prisoners, foul with the slime of CAPTAIN CAUTION 379 the cable tier and sore from head to foot because of the bed of wet and stinking rope on which they had lain interminably, clambered weakly up the companion-ladders to find the barque hove-to under heavy skies in the lee of the crowded dockyard of Sheerness, at the mouths of the Thames and the Medway, and under the guns of two lowering forts.

Isle of Sheppey, on which Sheerness stood, was a place reckoned by most naval officers to be damned dull.

The Isle of Sheppey slid by on the port side guarded by the port of Sheerness.

For this reason Monsieur le comte de Sheerness left orders, when he went to Londres, that musketeers were to be billeted in the stables, and the perimeters of the estate were to be patrolled night and day.