While still young he lost his father; his mother then removed to Stamford in Lincolnshire, and married the proprietor and editor of the ‘Stamford Mercury.’ Sharp, who for a considerable time aided his stepfather in conducting this newspaper, soon began to study geology.
In 1857 he went to live near Northampton, where he continued his scientific work and increased his collection of fossils.
He published two very valuable papers on the Northamptonshire oolites in the ‘Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society’ (xxvi.
225), besides a few of minor interest, and a useful textbook, ‘Rudiments of Geology’ (1875), a second and enlarged edition being published in the following year.
He married, in 1846, Caroline Ann Weldon, and died without issue on 28 January 1882, at Great Harrowden Hall, near Wellingborough, where the later years of his life were spent.