Local readers will know by now that Weslake & Co., the research engineers in Rye Harbour Road, have had to call in the receivers; half the 60-strong workforce is reported to have been laid off for the present, though it still seems possible that the business may continue as a going concern.
Weslake's came to Rye in 1947. The firm had been founded much earlier, back in the 1920s, by Harry Weslake, whose interest in motorbikes dated back to his boyhood before WW1 and who took out his first patent in 1918 when he was in the RAF. He set up in business soon after the Great War, first making his Wex carburettor and then going more deeply into engine design; he worked on aircraft engines in WW2. The decision to move from Tolworth in Surrey was taken in 1947; the late John Hacking was partly instrumental in bringing the firm to Rye, and the Weslake factory was built on its present site in Rye Harbour Road in the autumn of that year, though it has expanded over the years. Jeff Clew's 1979 biography of Harry Weslake, "Lucky All My Life", to which we are indebted for this brief history, goes into great technical detail about the firm's work, and lists the 46 patents taken out by Harry Weslake between 1918 and 1974. At one time Peter Berthon of Rye, so tragically drowned on holiday in South Africa, was associated with the firm's design work. Engines for cars, motorbikes, aircraft and even boats passed through Weslake & Co's hands and emerged very much the better (and faster) for it; famous marques and famous drivers have been grateful to the Weslake genius for the best part of half a century. Harry Weslake died of a heart attack at the World Speedway Championship at Wembley in 1978, having watched his machines come 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th and break the lap record three times in the course of the evening.
Although the firm kept a low profile locally, Weslake's has for many years been one of the leaders of Rye's industrial expansion. Quite apart from the personal tragedy of job losses, we must all be sad that a business which has brought the town's name to the fore in both national and international circles is now in difficulties.
Could it have been Friday night's storm which brought out so many people to support the lifeboats at the FE Centre on Saturday morning? £250 was raised for the RNLI at this event, simply using the canteen; doubtless the opportunity for a quick cup of coffee on a cold wet morning was popular anyway, never mind the good cause! Anyway, honorary secretary Mrs. Joan Parkes would like to express her committee's gratitude to the hundreds of people who brought and bought, and specially to the generous donors of the raffle prizes - which included tokens from the Hope Anchor Hotel, the Landgate Freezer Centre, Huffs, the Rye Model Laundry, and Kimber's Hair and Beauty Group. The raffle made over £60, with tickets sold only in the course of the morning; Mrs. Helen Goodwin does not remember a comparable one in all her long experience of raffle-running.
Our MP, Mr. Ken Warren, fulfils a pre-election promise when he holds his first Rye "surgery" on Friday week, 28 October, in the Council Offices in Cinque Ports Street (upstairs). Constituents who wish to see him should first make an appointment for that afternoon by ringing the Conservative Association office in Hastings; the number is 0424 423110, and the office is open in the mornings from 9.30 to 12.30.
2.
Mr. Olesen, of ESCC Highways Department at Bexhill, is always extremely helpful to the GAZETTE; this week we had three separate matters to raise with him.
A report that Messrs. Cooper Macdonald & Partners have been appointed as the design agents for the Rye bypass does not, he tells us, mean that anything is imminent.
All the normal consultation procedures still have to go through before the route is decided on, and it could well be ten years before work was ready to start and a further 18 months before the bypass was in use.
The parking restrictions for the cobbled streets are now at the stage where owners of property are being asked whether the appropriate notices could be fastened to their walls; as Mr. Olesen says, the very last thing needed in this most congested area is more posts along the pavements. Once these agreements have been negotiated, there is every hope that the restrictions will come into force very soon, and in some ways, life will become easier for people at the top of the town. As for the Conduit Hill bollards, he is puzzled by the rumour we heard, that there was another delay over procedure; as far as he knows, this job is all set to go as soon as the rest of the package is ready - and there is now a real hope that the package may after all include the handrail.
(But other parts of the town have their parking problems as well. Mr. Denys Tollemache bought his house in The Mint 13 years ago, knowing he could not park outside but knowing too that there was plenty of free parking in the Strand Quay area. In the last few years this space is being nibbled away by yellow lines snaking stealthily along the roads down there: narrow roads, admittedly, but not so narrow that cars have not parked there quite happily in the past. As Mr.
Tollemache says, with feeling, it is hard on Rye residents - who pay a lot for their houses and high rates on top of that - to have to pay again for parking their cars when it used to be free. We are sure a lot of people will agree with him.)
Some time ago, Rye Town Council had a bright idea to stop coaches parking on the cobbled triangular patch of ground between the Grist Mill (Bonassera's) and Colebrooke's; the SWA had dredged up a very large anchor from somewhere, and it was agreed to see if this could be permanently parked on the cobbles. Mr. Olesen now tells us that there is no difficulty over this from the ESCC viewpoint; as far as planning goes, it would presumably be street furniture (though rather more decorative than the bottle banks); and so we may hope to see it in place before too long.
Graham's Coaches are offering a series of excursions in November and early December, thoughtfully timed to be convenient for the mothers of children at school. These shopping trips go to Eastbourne, Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells, with a longer one on 6 December to Croydon. All the outings leave Rye at 9.15; the mums' trips are back by 3.15, but the Croydon one is an all-day affair, not getting home until 7.15. Further details from the Regent Motel in the afternoons - Rye 225884, or from Graham's (225548). The firm also plans a trip to the RAF Museum at Hendon at the end of January.
The Rye Art Gallery's current exhibition (until 20 November) is of Japanese prints lent by the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery. They are a lively selection, originally produced not for art-lovers but for the ordinary citizen who knew what he liked on his walls and didn't much care if everyone else had it as well (no prizes for naming the equivalent prints in the West nowadays). Obviously, the ordinary citizen liked plenty of action - none of the characters relaxes for an instant - and an odd thing is the way that the women in the pictures do not remotely resemble the very pretty Japanese girls whom we see in our streets. Indeed, the courtesans, a popular subject in this series, are decidedly chilling. Most of the prints show scenes from Japanese literature or mythology, but there are some which are charmingly familiar - the chrysanthemum show, the schoolroom, and above all the party playing in the snow with a well-wrapped baby held up to watch. Less familiar is the scene called "A meeting"; the host greets a guest - and, says the caption, "his secretary kneels in front of him"! On view upstairs is a new selection of paintings from the Gallery's own permanent collection.
- 3 - THE RYE GAZETTE, 19.10.1983
Radio Sussex, which officially opens its coverage of our end of its area on Saturday in Eastbourne, has already been to Rye twice in the course of the past week. Sussex Scene, the 11-to-1 magazine programme which gives space to local interviews, had on Thursday Biddy Cole talking to Sidney Horniblow of Udimore about her ten years as organiser of Rye Festival, and on Monday a piece about the GAZETTE, while next Monday Jo Kirkham takes David Arscott on a lightning tour of the town - or as much of it as can be glimpsed in ten minutes.
Sussex Scene is the home of the village correspondent, and it was really very entertaining to hear someone putting over her jumble sale as almost the event of the year in one small village - other people's local news is much more bearable in small chunks like this than when it occupies most of "our" local paper! Radio Sussex reception is excellent on the smallest transistor radio if you turn it towards Bexhill and tune to medium wave 258 (1161 KHz) and from Sunday to VHF 103.1 and 95.3.
It is disgracefully late for us only now to be mentioning the winter services on both buses and trains. The trains are the same as usual during the week, but there is now the usual winter two-hourly service on Sundays, starting with the 10.10 to Ashford and the 11.11 to Hastings. There are new, or fairly recent, timetable leaflets available for most of our Rye buses: the Peasmarsh/ Northiam and the Broad Oak/ Westfield routes, 405/6/8/10; the Tenterden and Maidstone route, 12; the coast route to Hastings with its spur to the Harbour, 414/5; and the long 550-559 route which covers the journey from Dover via Lydd, Camber, Rye and on to Hastings via Icklesham (routes within Hastings have also been re-timetabled).
Check before you go? Tenterden 2123 is the number for the no. 12 route; the Rye bus station can answer most queries about buses out of Rye on 223343; and the main Hastings & District enquiries number is 0424 433711. Since the decentralisation of the bus company administration, we are no longer Maidstone & District as such, though the Hastings & District routes may be associated with M & D or indeed with East Kent if they serve a large area. Rye bus station tells us that this is a great improvement on the old system, for bus staff and passengers alike.
The latest hazard in the Goods Yard car park is - or was on Monday - an unfenced drop - from the floor of the old shed to the footpath past the public loos, not immediately apparent to people parking on what was the shed floor and then heading for the footpath. BR says that it is the demolition contractors' responsibility to fence it; there is a rather unexpected fence between the end of the shed and the station car park, but not so much as a beflagged bit of string where a warning is really needed. However, we would have thought that anyone breaking a leg would be complaining, not to say claiming, off British Rail?
Biddy Cole at Rye Tiles in Wish Ward is looking for an afternoon receptionist to deal with customers and answer the phone, etc.; it would be useful if she (he?) could also type. Hours are 1.30 or 2 till 5, Monday to Friday. Contact Mrs. Cole at The Old Brewery, Wish Ward, or ring Rye 223038.
Newly arrived in Rye is a young woman with nursing experience and also plenty of practice in looking after children, since she has two of her own and used to run a nursery school. She is now seeking a part-time job to fit in with school hours and would be very willing to help an elderly person or to mind pre-school children during the day - or to consider any other jobs on offer. Please get in touch with Mrs. Sherren, c/o The Loke, East Street - Rye 222821.
4.
Some months ago there was a particularly interesting planning application from Lincolnshire: John and Ellen Barrable wanted to open a glass-blowing studio and "seconds" shop in the Colebrooke/Griffin Boone building on Strand Quay. We are very sorry to hear now from the Barrables that they have encountered unexpected difficulties over these premises, and it will not be possible for them to open there after all. A glass-blowing studio is, of course, a tremendous attraction for locals and tourists alike, and the Barrables have been approached by several local authorities with interesting propositions. However, since coming to Rye by chance they feel that their proper place is here, if only they can find some suitable premises. Ideally they are looking for a building of about 1,000 square feet, suitable for the installation of a furnace and, very important, reasonably accessible to visitors. They would be prepared to rent or buy; but they have tried all the agents, and nothing possible has turned up. It really would be very sad for Rye if they went elsewhere; does any reader know of an empty, or potentially empty, building which might suit them? If so, please get in touch with John Barrable at Old Church House, Cold Hanworth, Lincolnshire, LN2 3RE (phone 0673 61252). The Barrables hope to come to Rye early next month, and it would be splendid if we could find them something to look at then; any suggestions would be welcome, even if they don't exactly fit the bill.
A petition with more than ten pages of signatures has been sent to Rother’s planning committee, protesting against the proposed opening of a coffee and snack bar at 7 High Street (see last week's GAZETTE) and expressing the view that such an establishment would be grossly detrimental to the High Street area. We understand that by no means all the petitioners have actually looked at the planning application, so the petition presumably represents a very strong antipathy to a coffee-shop in the High Street at all.
This week's planning list includes an application from Alsfords for a switch room building on their land beside the Rye Harbour Road; and a change-of-use application from "Pocket Full of Rye" in one of the Strand Quay warehouses for permission to use the first floor for selling instead of storage - the plans for this show a new staircase replacing the present one.
We have advance notice that the Rye Bonfire Night procession on 19 November will this year take a different and simplified route. It will start at 7.15 from Tilling Green, where the floats will be judged (judging for the fancy dress, etc., is to take place at 5.30 in the Boys Club). The route leads into the town along Cinque Ports Street, through the Landgate arch down the High Street and The Mint to Strand Quay, where it will stop briefly at the Ship Inn, for refreshment there or at one of the half-dozen hostelries in the area. Back along Wish Ward and Cinque Ports Street, picking up Miss Rye Fawkes en route (Angharad Rees), finally reaching the Salts via the Landgate and Bedford Place. Full details are in the programme which will be available very soon.
Available from Salmons book shop at White Rock, Hastings (and, at present, only from them) for 60p is a booklet which any learner-driver would value. Entitled "How to Pass Your Driving Test in Hastings", it gives detailed directions for negotiating all the possible test routes, in a very readable form, with maps and warnings of unexpected difficulties - "Uphill, with a tricky camber in the turn", "Two drains can be a nuisance here, disconcerting if you drive too near the kerb" - plus some very helpful remarks on "How to avoid being nervous on the Test" and even "Basic Dialogue for a Mock-Test". The idea came to its author David Haines, a lecturer in English, when he found himself in an unexpected state of nerves on taking his own test two years ago; he devised a system to deal with his own problem, and then decided to expand it more as a community publication (he has WEA connections) than as a commercial proposition. We feel sure that anyone due to take a driving test in Hastings should not be without it.
5.
On Tuesday of last week, the Editor was invited to a wake. There was the traditional provision of food and drink, old friends present, and absent ones remembered, and reminiscences of the early days, the later success and the final decline of the deceased. A good time was had by all.
The deceased was, we are sorry to say, the Rye Antique Collectors' Club.
This group started in 1971 with around ten members, meeting in each other's houses in and around Rye. Speakers were local, not making excessive demands on the club finances, and the emphasis was on the pleasures of collecting rather than always on serious antiques. Gradually the membership grew until most members hadn't rooms large enough to house meetings - as the Vice-Chairman said in her final report, remembering a session at her own home, "It was only by someone having one leg up the chimney and everyone breathing in together that we managed it"! For some years the group enjoyed the hospitality of Mrs. Doreen Salmon in Iden, and when the Salmons left the area, the club found sanctuary in the pleasant and comfortable room at the St. John HQ on Conduit Hill. With up to 40 members on the books, the club flourished for some years; but finding speakers grew more difficult, and those coming long distances tended to be expensive and sometimes found only a small audience on a bad or busy night. Transport difficulties didn't help; and there was also a certain reluctance to publicise the fact that one was interested in Antiques, for fear of burglars.
The Club has therefore been wound up, shut down, annihilated. The final meeting enjoyed a stimulating talk by Victoria Williams, Curator of Hastings Museum, in which she described with slides the various ways in which painters have represented Hastings from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. Three of the Club's founder members were present, having remained with it throughout its twelve-year existence. After donations of £10 each to St. John Ambulance Brigade and to the Hastings & St. Leonards Museum Association, the Club is handing over its funds to the Rye Museum Association and its very modest records to the Museum for the benefit of anyone who may wish to revive it in the future.
As a result of tennis coaching courses in Rye and Chichester over the past three years, a hundred families in Uganda will soon have a well where there was none before. The "Tennis for All" courses have been run during July and August by Paul Waroquiers, with help from Miss Kathleen Goldie-Smith who makes herself responsible for arranging the non-French bookings and finds the accommodation. This year's students have come from Holland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Hong Kong, Thailand, Canada, USA and the West Indies, as well as from France and Britain; they have five days of very concentrated tennis coaching and practice, and their play is videoed for subsequent analysis.
Paul Waroquiers and his wife Nicole and Miss Goldie-Smith all care deeply about the Third World, and they saw these holiday courses (Paul normally coaches near Paris) as a way of helping; they agreed with UNICEF to provide the £1,250 for the bore well, and in fact have raised £250 more than is needed. Their success is an incentive to carry on the tennis project - which is, says Miss Goldie-Smith, in itself a very pleasant and rewarding exercise in international relations for which Rye provides a most appropriate background.
The Strand Garden Shop has recently been running a guess-the-weight competition, the subject being a pumpkin grown in the Thompsons' Icklesham garden by Nigel, aged 17 and just embarking on a career in horticulture. The seed was Unwin's Atlantic Giant, and Nigel used no gimmicks, just normal gardening practice; but his orange monster weighed 77 lbs 12 ozs (54 stone) on the shop's scales (the world record is somewhere over 400 lbs). Guessers produced weights ranging from 22 to 156 lbs, but Gordon Stanbridge of Udimore was remarkably close at 78 lbs.
He wins, not the pumpkin, but a token; we imagine that recipes for a wide variety of pumpkin dishes would be appreciated by Nigel's family...
8.
Thursday, 20th Thrift Shop, Red Cross Centre, 10.30 to 4 (and Friday, Saturday)
Tilling Green School jumble sale, 6
ATC cheese-and-wine party (invitations), 7.30
Friday, 21st NO SCHOOL (Thomas Peacocke and Freda Gardham)
"Crime Alert" meeting, TH, 7.30 (GAZETTE no. 53)
Saturday, 22nd One-day course in needlepoint lace, FEC
RAFA jumble sale, The Grove, 2 (see below)
PUT CLOCKS BACK WHEN YOU GO TO BED - one hour's extra sleep
Monday, 24th HALF-TERM WEEK (schools reopen on Monday, 31st) Women's British Legion meeting, Red Cross, 7.30
Tuesday, 25th Bible Society, three lay speakers, Methodist Hall, 7.45
Rye Players AGM, FEC, 8 (anyone interesting in joining or just
supporting the company will be received with open arms!)
Wednesday, 26th Red Cross Over-60s Club, Red Cross Centre, 1.45
Bowls Club AGM, St. John HQ, 7
C of E Children's Society event (invitations), 7.30
• Congratulations to Vickie and Les Britton, of Cooper Road, on the birth of their son Daniel Thomas (8 lbs ozs) on 13 October - a brother for Bayley, and first grandson for Pat and Charles Williams.
• Two reminders for next week: Christmas cards will be the main attraction at the coffee morning for the League of Friends of Rye Hospital at the Red Cross Centre on Thursday, 27th, at 10; and Laurie Band's slide show "Rye in the Past" takes place at the Community Centre in aid of its funds at 7.30 on Friday, 28th.
• Among a truly vast collection of goods given to the RAF Association for its sale at The Grove on Saturday are a moped in running order, and a photocopier - complete with a supply of paper; the Association is, however, making no special arrangements for all-night queuers!
• The NSPCC's recent house-to-house collection in Rye and the villages raised the splendid sum of £924, an astonishing £100 up on last year's total.
• The Scouts' jumble sale on Saturday, which could well have been washed out entirely by the weather, instead produced the surprising total of £116.
• Two grants have been promised out of the Town Lottery funds recently; £100 goes to the Bonfire Boys towards the purchase of fireworks, and £100 towards the wheel-chair toilet at the Community Centre - the latter to be paid once the work is 50% complete.
• House plants belonging to Rye WI members will undoubtedly have benefited from the October meeting, when Mr. Hudson spoke on their care; the prizes won in the Group Home Economics Show were presented at the meeting.
• Crime: we do hope there was only brown money in the collecting box for the Pestalozzi village which was meanly stolen from the customers' side of the Midland Bank counter recently. The Press Book this week gives details of rather more road traffic accidents than usual - none of them, we are glad to say, involving Rye cars or Rye people.
• The Ypres Castle's Conker Contest on Sunday meant a lot of fun for everyone, raising just over £50 for the Inshore Rescue Boat Fund, and a win for the ladies' team from the pub's own Jug and Bottle Social Club; landlord Geoff Pearson is most grateful to local traders who presented such a good collection of raffle prizes.
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office. It is published by Mrs. Mary Owen, 94 Udimore Road, Rye (Rye 222303), and news items for inclusion are always welcome - deadline is Monday afternoon, 9 am Tuesday for emergencies. The GAZETTE costs 25p weekly, and is delivered to subscribers and pick-up points on Wednesday; spares may be available at Squirrels, 9-13 Cinque Ports Street, Rye. (Copyright Mary Owen 1983)