It was a dark day 60 years ago when the gates of Sheerness Naval Dockyard on the Isle of Sheppey slammed shut for the last time.

More than 2,500 skilled workers, many who had been apprenticed there, were scattered across the country, some ending up in Chatham and others in Portsmouth or Scotland.

Sheerness has never fully recovered from the economic black hole left by the closure on March 31, 1960, and is still rated as one of the most deprived areas in the UK.

Betty Oldmeadow recalled: "Two of my uncles had to go to Chatham Dockyard to work. Some of my best friends moved to Portsmouth as their fathers were transferred and they were greatly missed.

"The town started to disintegrate. No more could we watch the dockies riding their bikes through the town at lunchtime. We had to wait to cross the road but it was a never-to-be forgotten spectacle.

"As pupils at the Girls' Secondary School in Jefferson Road in the 1950s we were taken on a tour of the Dockyard and I remember a submarine being in the dry dock for repairs.

"I have happy memories tinged with sadness."

Tom Sedman-Smith also remembers the dockers' daily bike rides to and from work.

He said: "I lived in Blue Town and went to school at Delamark Road so every morning in the late 1950s as I walked over the moat bridge hundreds of dockers would come the other way.

"On the way back from school at dinner time crossing the bridge, I was often nearly pushed back over the bridge by the rush of dockers racing out on foot or on bicycles or the occasional car."

It was in 1958 that the government announced the closure. Marion Payne said: "It was like a bomb going off in our house.

"My parents were having a bathroom and inside toilet built when this news came like a bolt out of the blue. They were either out of a job or had to travel to Chatham or move away to Portsmouth or Scotland.

"My dad was on the point of retirement but got a job at the Pilot Trading Company as a boiler man. A few people were lucky to get jobs locally."

Two generations later, the once vibrant town which had supported theatres and cinemas and was a top seaside attraction with its own seafront funfair and boating is still suffering.

Politicians tried to breathe new life into it with the gift of a state-of-the-art steel mill but that has also closed after blighting those living nearby with breathing problems from its pollution.

The docks went through many different hands before becoming part of the Peel Ports empire which has done wonders for trade at the expense of cutting off many fine buildings from the public such as the listed Boat Store, believed to have pioneered techniques later used to build skyscrapers.

Peel Ports has an impressive 20-year £50 million plan to regenerate the area with a marina. But Sheppey has been given many false promises before.

Yet just 15 miles away it is a different story.

Medway was shattered when Chatham Naval Dockyard closed on March 31, 1984. But Medway council fought back with a number of high profile regeneration plans.

There are luxury high rise flats where empty wharves once stood and the original dockyard has been turned into a popular tourist attraction showing off the dockers' heritage and even playing host to a number of film and TV companies including Call The Midwife.

There is a busy marina and a factory outlet centre with restaurants and an Odeon cinema. The nearest Sheppey gets to a cinema is the revamped Criterion Theatre in Blue Town which shows movies on a Friday afternoon.

The newly-formed Sheppey Community Development Forum is bidding for National Lottery cash and the Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Society has secured funding to turn the burned out ruins of the Dockyard Church into a community centre.

It remains to be seen what will happen to the rest of dockyard which was established by Samuel Pepys, the first secretary of the Admiralty, in the 17th century.

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