• Introduction
• History
• Key Dates
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It is easy to assume that Sheerness Jews lived in what we now assume to be Sheerness proper, that is the district of Mile Town. However from those early days the Jews lived not in Mile Town, the present center of Sheerness, but around the Naval port in Blue Town.

Blue Town was not a nice place to live. It was a small self-contained community built on a very, damp and wet place reclaimed out of the marshes. Its reason for being there was purely to serve the Naval Dock close by. The settlement was prone to both flood and fire. What was more it was a packed and teeming suburb heaving with the varied and unruly life such as gathered around Naval installations.

The community lived in the same sorts of housing as the dock workers. These were in the beginning small wooden cottages, painted with blue naval-paint, hence "Blue Town". Later these were cleared away and replaced with better houses.

The community rapidly reached its height during the Napoleonic Wars. The community had a synagogue before 1805, and signed a lease on its tiny cemetery at Hope Street by 1806, though oddly enough they seem to have made a first interment in the ground in 1804 before signing their lease.