Will Palin: ‘My father is a big personality… I wanted to do something different, get a sense of myself’

Palin’s adopted town was once at the centre of the British naval industry: the Royal Naval Dockyard, a vast complex first laid out by Samuel Pepys in 1665 to service the Admiralty’s fleet. It closed in 1960 after more than 300 years of industry.

There is a hard-bitten beauty to Sheerness, with the robust, York-stone church standing alongside a row of fine Georgian terraces built for naval officers and hard up against a thundering arterial road and piles of shipping containers. The rest of the island is relentlessly flat, mostly fields, with a peppering of factories, big-box shopping centres and industrial estates.

Palin first visited Sheppey in 2006 and was beguiled by its “strange magic”. The church, built in the 1820s to unite naval, military and civilian worshippers, in its ruinous state struck him as emblematic. Many might have written it off. It was in the hands of a private developer who seemed happy to leave it to rot. 

But Palin saw neglected treasure: “I knew the original architect was George Lewell Taylor, a naval surveyor who also designed developments around Marble Arch,” he says. “He had an urbane, sophisticated flavour to everything he produced: Greek revival, enormous ionic columns.” 

In 2015, Palin co-founded the trust, brought in his contacts, connections and expertise, and set about helping the local council to acquire a compulsory acquisition order and raising cash for restoration. 

“I hope we have created something special in a part of the world that is not prioritised for this type of architecture,” says Palin.

After a three-year retrofit, Hugh Broughton Architects (the same firm that worked on the Greenwich Painted Hall) has brought modernity and sophistication to the church’s Georgian bones. The 200-year-old arched windows and patterned-tiled flooring remain. Through the grand doors, past those ionic columns, the nave is now an airy workspace, with sleek meeting rooms and a café. A mezzanine has been built for quiet desk work. 

The lobby is flanked by two stone staircases, both of which were found to have shattered under the weight of the collapsed roof. One has been restored; the other cleaned; its broken treads left as a sculptural, shattered spiral. “That’s the theme of this building,” says Palin. “Letting it speak for what it’s been through.” 

The furniture is chic and expensive. Someone has accidentally left a window open, and pigeons are flapping around the pristine timber ceiling, which sends Palin into panic. “I’m worried about the furniture,” he says. “If it gets on the upholstery, it’s £1k worth of damage.”