On the agenda of Rye Town Council's meeting last Monday (21st) was an item relegated to Part II - meaning that it was to be discussed after any public and press present had left "as publicity would be prejudicial to the public interest by reason of the confidential nature of the business to be transacted". How right! And what a pity that in the course of the meeting it was decided on a vote to transfer the item to Part I, so that its confidential nature disappeared immediately...
We refer, of course, to the remarkable report presented at the meeting by a sub-committee under the chairmanship of Councillor James Menhinick - a policy document intended for further discussion by Councillors, but naturally and gleefully headlined in the Sussex Express as "Town's parking ban bombshell".
We rang Councillor Menhinick to ask if he had really proposed what was reported. Certainly, he said. Since his major proposal is that all street parking within the town wall boundaries should be banned during "daylight" except for permit holders and some loading or unloading activities, we pressed for details. Mr. Menhinick said firmly that policy documents aren't expected to deal in details; but he did reveal that he meant permits to go to all residents, and intended that loading, etc., should be restricted to certain hours only.
What a perfectly lovely bit of wishful thinking! How delightful it would be to have our streets clear of cars! Perhaps less delightful to have our shops short on deliveries, empty of shoppers - or just possibly empty, full stop, since the Chamber of Trade is horrified at the councillors' suggestions. Chairman Roy Barnes tells us that some of his members know they depend for their winter trade on shoppers who come into the town by car, and if parking in the town centre were to be banned they might as well shut up altogether except in the tourist season. As for deliveries, it is all very well for giant multiples in Eastbourne to dictate when their suppliers' lorries shall arrive - but here? And not one of the High Street shops has a back entrance clear of the main traffic routes - as we all found out when, for instance, Freeman Hardy had the builders in before Christmas.
Rye has always considered itself the centre of the half-circle of villages which, together with the sea, surrounds it. Even now, many village people don't in fact shop here but go to Peasmarsh or Tenterden, or to Sainsburys or Tescos in Hastings and Ashford - because they can park near the shops. Some of these shoppers are, it is hoped, to be lured into Rye when the new supermarket is built with parking beside it. The extra parking on both sides of the railway currently being negotiated by Rother and British Rail was a comfort to the Chamber of Trade, which was worried about this aspect of the supermarket plans (GAZETTE nos. 108 and 109).
But if Rye residents only are to be allowed to park on Hilder's Cliff, in the High Street, East Street, Market Street, Lion Street, Market Road, Mermaid Street, Watchbell Street and Conduit Hill (all within the line of the old town wall), either Bother's extra parking will be taken up by the present regular country shoppers - or, of course, it won't ... in which case Rye residents may find them¬selves with lots of lovely parking space but short of even more useful shops than at present (see page 2 in this connection).
Unfortunately Councillor Menhinick was unable to let the GAZETTE see a copy of his report, so we are cheerfully stating one side of the case only. It will be inter¬esting to see how much support there is, when the Town Council considers the report after two months' reflection at its next meeting, for the other side.
For the record, the sub-committee consists of three councillors from North Salts (James Menhinick, Hilda Nelson-Barrett and Osma Jones) and one from each side of Strand Stran Quay (Frank Palmer and Ed Wiseman).
2.
• Mr. James Bateman tells us that The Rye Bookshop will open on Friday (1 February) to commence business again after the recent flooding, though on a reduced scale. On Wednesday and Thursday the bundles of slightly damp books in the window are available free - state the number of the bundle you want and it will be handed to you.
However, a great many people will be exceedingly sorry to learn that The Rye Bookshop will cease trading on 31 March. Mr. Bateman says it had anyway been his intention to retire in September, at the end of the summer season, when he and his wife would have had the business for just over twenty years. They took over from Gilbert Fabes in May 1965, when Mr. Fabes retired after a lifetime spent in the book trade, and for several years after that they had Mr. Faber's help on the technical side. Help well worth having - for Mr. Fabes had been the manager of the Rare Books Department first at Foyles and then at Hatchards, and when he decided to open a bookshop in Rye in 1945 he kept in touch with contacts world- wide by means of a twice-yearly catalogue. It was, indirectly, owing to one of these catalogues that Mr. and Mrs. Bateman called at the shop and eventually came to run the business (As for the actual shop premises, the owner's agents - Messrs. Vidler & Co - will be handling future developments.)
• Mr. Phil Simpson announces that Millers will cease trading altogether during February. The run-down is already well under way, and by next week most of th health-foods section will be transferred to John Ciccone at Webbs Bakery and Food- market, The Spar Shop, in Cinque Ports Street. Sally Bryant, who has been at Millers for over six years looking after the health-foods section, will be joining Mr. Ciccone's staff.
The Spar shop will also be taking over many of the speciality lines stocked by Millers, as well as the coffee side of the business, which will be transferred as soon as arrangements can be made during next month. (There seems, alas, to >be no home offered to the cheeses, nor to the exotic jarsful of spices, to note just two items which will be much missed by local housewives.)
Millers' premises have of course, been bought by the Anglia Building Society with the intention of transferring its present High Street office into the larger shop.
The GAZETTE is very sad to be announcing the closure of two long-established and respected High Street businesses in the same issue. But we shall look forward to seeing the Bateman family around the town for many years to come and we wish Mr. and Mrs. Simpson every success in whatever they decide to do next.
• A fortnight ago, we referred to Longs helping out the Tuck Shoppe with bread when the latter's bakery was flooded. There was no room then for a story told to us some weeks ago by Miss Phyllis Apps, but it is part of Rye's commercial history and we think it could suitably appear here.
When Miss Appals father had the bakery in Cinque Ports Street which traded under the name of Stocks (and is now the Wool Shop), she found him one day collapsed over the dough trough; the doctor sent him to hospital with acute appendicitis, leaving his daughter with the problem of the current day's baking plus the immediate future of the business. Everyone rallied round. Mr. Long, Mr. Thompson of the Tower Bakery and Mr. Len Webb of the Mill between them sorted out that day's baking, and then they took over the Stocks deliveries on the outskirts of the town, while the town customers collected their bread from the shop. Four months later, when things were back to normal, Stocks found that they had lost only one customer!
Alan Webb told us that such mutual help and support was very common in the days when machinery breakdowns were more common and fuel supplies less reliable - perhaps the most memorable occasion being when his father's bakery at the Mill burnt down in June 1930.
- 3 - THE RYE GAZETTE, 30.1.1985
After last week's thank-yous from Social Services, we have had reminders from various sources about other people to whom special gratitude is due after Rye's frosty fortnight. East Sussex County Council wants thanks to go to the Social Services staff themselves, and this we are very glad to pass on. Mrs. Sheila Barton speaks of the magnificent way the WRVS meals-on-wheels drivers and mates coped with the deliveries (and doubtless the cooks, though indoors, had their problems as well); they are greatly obliged to Davie's Garage, without whose help the drivers could not got round at times. As it was, some deliveries had to be made on foot; no-one felt very happy about driving a dinner-laden car down a snowy Mermaid Street, for instance!
Somehow the postmen and the milkmen and the dustmen managed, and the doctors and district nurses and ambulance-drivers, and the paper-boys and girls. The Fire Brigade were called out several times, though not in the town itself. Although there seem to have been remarkably few road accidents locally, the police had to go about their business at all hours, icy roads or not. The trains seem to have done very well, from all accounts - though we did hear that one senior member of the Town Council had to spend a night on a waiting-room bench at Ashford station when the last Rye train gave up in despair and left without waiting for the London connection! There were times when the buses couldn't run - but not very many. and we are sure that this catalogue, even now, has glaring omissions; but we will just say
THANK YOU VERY MUCH, EVERYONE, FOR LOOKING AFTER US SO WELL IN RYE.
Footnotes on the snow:
• A reader with a long tape-measure sends us an interesting statistic. The distance from the St. Mary's tower porch to the west end of the church is some 601. When the snow melted, there were 10 heaps of dog mess revealed on the cobbles. One every six feet, he says; how about the rest of the town?
• A pleasanter sight as the snow vanished was a bunch of primroses, some in full flower, in Ashenden Avenue on Wednesday morning; but we were sorry to see that the Badger Gate yuccas didn't look at all well.
•... and spare a thought for the Rother Council road-sweeping team, currently engaged in sweeping and shovelling up hundredweight upon hundredweight of grit!
Three weeks ago we asked for information about an inscription on the cliff which used to be visible from the South Undercliff road between the wars. Two readers responded.
Frank Palmer, by a curious coincidence, had that day come by a postcard which showed the inscription - not as high up as we had been given to understand, but written on an outcrop of rock above a seat set in a strip of garden at the foot of the cliff. It wasn't clear from the card exactly where along the road the photographer had stood, but here John Smith was able to help. He was born in Castle Terrace, between Shipyard Lane and the old bus garage, and well remembered the inscription, painted on the rock in black (probably using tar). He also mentioned the seat, and it seems likely that this is what the inscription referred to - certainly a sheltered spot on a sunny day. Viewed from Shipyard Lane, the garden was to the right of the single cottage opposite (at present with builders in) and was not the property of the cottager but was gardened by someone different, perhaps from the house above. The remains of the garden can still be seen, but the cliff behind is heavily overgrown and the rocky outcrop could be at the foot of any of several Church Square gardens - we would guess at no. 34, 36 or 38.
Mr. Palmer's postcard showed some handsome cast-iron railings on the Shipyard Lane corner. Mr. Smith tells us that these went all along South Undercliff's front gardens - until they were melted down for Spitfires in WW2!
4.
A lot of people are getting increasingly confused about the progress of this venture. There seem to be a number of different versions going round, depending whom you are talking to, but we think the story so far goes like this. However, don't take it as gospel - there may well be amendments next week!
GAZETTE no. 112 reported on a meeting at Thomas Peacocks School before Christmas, when there was on show a model and slides of a possible building, prefabricated but very solid and designed for the purpose with built-in insulation and a vandal-proof exterior. This was said to cost under £150,000 to erect on a normal site, though the soft nature of the Thomas Peacocke ground might mean more money for underpinnings.
GAZETTE no. 109 had already conveyed the bad news that the County Council was no longer able to offer any actual cash towards the project which they had originated - they would give the site and contribute the school's share of maintenance costs, use of cloakrooms, etc., but there was no capital available. Hcwever, Rother was expected to produce £100,000 and everyone was expecting a further 450,000 from the Sports Council, so things began to look good.
However, in the course of January both Rother's Recreation Committee and its Policy Committee considered a report on halls for Rye and Battle from the County Architect. He was very sniffy about prefabricated structures, and recommended for Rye a building "in good sound traditional construction". Very nice too; but unfortunately it would cost C295,480. Rother asked him to think again about a cheaper type of building; they were beginning to wonder if they could afford two halls.
A further blow was a letter from the Sports Council. This offered £25,000 for the Battle project - and nothing at all for Rye, which went on the reserve lists Since the Rye plans have been serious for more than a year (more than ten years, if you go back to the very beginning), we were somewhat surprised, and rang the Sports Council. The chap we spoke to was non-committal - not to say puzzled - about the order of priorities; but what was clear was that if Rye got a grant at all it would be £25,000 and not £50,000.
Next, back on the bright side, came a statement to the News from Rother's Recreation Committee chairman, quoted as saying that he didn't doubt both halls would be built. And County Councillor Joan Yates is equally hopeful, and expects help for the, Rye project from Rural Development Area funds.
So the present position seems to be that the only relatively certain money is £100,000 from Rother. There is the chance of a further £25,000 from the Sports Council, plus the possibility of an unspecified sum from the RDA in due course. And the County Architect's recommendation is for a building that will cost well over £290,000. Deadlock, surely? - unless he can be persuaded to change his mind (and he is meeting the Steering Committee at the school this evening); or, of course, unless the RDA is likely to cough up some £170,000.
Footnotes:
• Councillor George Shackleton made a very sporting try for Rye at the Policy meeting; he proposed that out of its Elm put by for leisure facilities, Rother should pledge a straight £250,000 for the Rye centre. But he got no appreciable support from other committee members.
• Councillor John Lutman of Fairlight, in Bradford recently, went to have a look at the hall erected there by the firm referred to in paragraph 2. He was very impressed by what he saw. Also impressed, he told Rother, was the chap in charge of the Bradford centre, who had not had a window broken nor even a light shattered, despite the fact that Bradford City FC did their indoor training there; he much preferred the building to a traditional hall he had worked in earlier.
• And finally, we wonder if people in glass houses should throw stones; it may not have been the present County Architect but it was presumably his department which was responsible for that gem of modern architecture, the TPS ROSLA block!
5.
A BBC television team was in Rye at the beginning of this week filming for the history programme "Timewatch". Most people in Rye will anyway have heard of Samuel Jeakes; father, son and grandson bore the name in the later part of the seventeenth centure. Samuel Jeakes II was, like his father, an ardent astrologer, and was known to have kept a diary relating to this interest. This had been lost, but was recently discovered in Los Angeles by Dr. Michael Hunter of Birkbeck College, London. Dr. Hunter is talking about Jeakes in a 20-minute programme, and the team is filming scenes for a dramatisation.
In his diary, Jeakes gave a careful description of his own physical appearance, and the BBC's Robert Marshall tells us that David Hatton, playing the part, bears a quite remarkable resemblance to the self-portrait. Bernadette Windsor plays Elizabeth Hartshorne, whom Jeakes married when she was 13, and much of the filming took place at Hartshorne House (The Old Hospital) in Mermaid Street and around the cobbled streets, followed by a stint at Leasam Farm today for scenes on horse-back.
The programme is expected to go out on BBC2 during the first week in April; the BBC will be notifying the neighbours - will one of them perhaps be kind enough to tell the GAZETTE?
It seems possible that TVS and BBC will both be filming in the town as we write (Tuesday), since TVS is expected here to cover the Rye Town Council parking report - see front page.
Back in July, in GAZETTE no. 90, we wrote about a plan in British Columbia to construct a replica of the brigantine "Cadboro", built in Rye in 1824 and used extensively to open up the Pacific coastline between 1827 and 1862. Our information came from Mrs. Marie Dixon of The Olde Bell Inn, whose sister in Canada !ead sent her a newspaper cutting about the project.
Mrs. Dixon's sister, Mrs. Irene Rose, has just been over here on a visit, and brought with her a further newspaper report on the vessel. It seems that the boat will not be strictly speaking a replica of the "Cadboro" since, despite careful enquiries, "there was no way of knowing what her underbody configuration was". So her builders are using drawings of an old American fishing schooner from the Smithsonian Institution, changing the rig to a brigantine, adding length and modifying her stern (we quote), so that "to the average eye she looks like a ship out of the last century". Admittedly she will have dacron sails, electric light, electronic navigation aids and an engine; but she is timber-built, the planks seeamed and the joints caulked in the traditional way.
This second article says nothing about Expo 86, where the new boat was to be used for ferrying passengers across to Vancouver Island; but anyway she will eventually be operated by the Sail and Life Training Society based in Victoria, for youth training. She will be called "Spirit of Chemainus" (where she is being built). Please, Mrs. Rose, keep us in touch with her progress.
The Christian Lunch Club's meeting on 7 February (Community Centre, 12 for 12.30, £1 to include a light meal) will hear a speaker on a very unusual venture. "L'Arche" community was founded in France by an ex-naval French Canadian who took into his own home two mentally handicapped people from a local institution. He found that with care and love they could develop what gifts they had; other people joined in the work, and now there are more than half-a-dozen L'Arche houses in England alone and the movement is spreading as far as India. The speaker comes from the Kent house, and as well as talking on the caring and sharing work of the L'Arche communities will show slides. (Local people may remember the occasion last summer when L'Arche members spent a night in Rye during a pilgrimage to Canterbury.)
How confusing of the French to say "arc" when they mean arch, but "arche" when they mean ark!
6.
Local Council of Churches chairman Ann Hamilton reports that the Baptist Church hall was crowded on Monday last week for the Council's open meeting to discuss the local Covenant. (Perhaps, she adds, it is worth repeating that this Covenant has nothing to do with finance; it is a statement of the commitment of the local Christian community to continue to heal the divisions of the past.) Understandably most people were from Rye and the immediate neighbourhood, with Icklesham the furthest-flung village represented.
"A lively discussion showed how much those who spoke valued the warm relations we enjoy between the different donominations. Many questions were raised, but through them came the message that the unity we have now we hope will continue to grow in the years to come" says Ann.
At the Council's AGM beforehand, thanks were expressed to the retiring Secretary (Yve Imm) and Treasurer (Jan Roberts), who are being succeeded by Henry Hilton and Jack Hemmings respectively.
The Bother Council planning staff who deal with country enquiries and applications (including Rye) have until now been based at the Watch Oak, Battle, while the main planning department was at the Town Hall, Bexhill. The Battle staff were moved last week, to join their Bexhill colleagues, and therefore it is now a waste of time phoning Battle (0424 63371) on planning matters, though the Housing Department and the Environmental Health and Technical Services Department are still there.
The Bexhill Town Hall number is 0424 216321; but we gather that the phone exten¬sions there are still not quite adapted to the influx of staff, and unless you are desperate for an immediate answer it might be safer, for the next week or so, to write rather than phone!
County Councillor Joan Yates suspects that there may be more anxiety than is at present justified about the future of Rye Memorial Hospital. When the new hospital in Hastings is built, there may well be a rethink about Rye's role; but Mrs. Yates wants to assure people that there is no question of it being pulled down. One suggestion, she tells us, is that it could be run by, or with the help of, local management, independently of the main NHS organisation - an interesting return to the cottage-hospital principle on which it wes founded.
There have, of course, been rumours for a long time about the future of our other hospital, Hill House. At present it houses in its grounds Hill House School, run by the education authority for mentally handicapped children (the hospital is of course run by the health authority, and our latest information is that its child population is practically nil, the school children coming in daily from the surrounding area). The Friends of Hill House Hospital held their AGM on Tuesday; we do hope that if anything about the future of the hospital was stated at that meeting, someone will tell us for next week's GAZETTE?
British Rail's latest handout offers good value for the energetic on Saturday, 9th. Three excursions are listed, and the fares quoted are from and Southern Region station (of course including Rye).
A very early start would be needed to catch the 9.10 train from Waterloo to Dorset, where coaches take passengers on a tour of Hardy's Wessex (010.50). Art-lovers can visit Gainsborough and Constable country on a train leaving Liverpool Street at 10.50 - coaches are also involved here (8.40). Or there is an excursion at 10.10 from Euston to Coventry (g10) and Birmingham (g11). These are return fares, and there are reductions (not half-fares, though) for children and railcard holders. The journey across London is not included, and advance booking is necessary - details and tickets from main-line stations. If BR make a habit of this sort of thing, it might be worth enquiring from Hastings or Ashford what else is coming up, and when?
• The Rye Harbour Site of Special Scientific Interest(SSSI) stretches some way towards Winchelsea, so we are not sure exactly where Ken Warren, MP, meant when he asked a question in Parliament recently about the bulldozing and draining of 25 acres of the area in 1983. However, the reply from Mr. Ian Gow makes the present position about the SSSI quite clear: "It has been afforded the fuller statutory protection of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 since September 1984, when the Nature Conservancy Council gave notice of the scientific interest of the site to landowners and occupiers" - who are now obliged to consult the Nature Conservancy Council before carrying out work. The site, says Mr. Gow, is now fully protected as an SSSI.
Twenty-six Boy Georges (Boys George?) assembled at the St. John HQ on Conduit Hill on Friday for the annual party of the St. John Ambulance Nursing Cadets. With a different theme each year, this gathering must have been quite a sight, and the four staff were among those who dressed up to order! Dr. and Mrs. Townsend awarded prizes to Sally Mitchell (Upper School), Alison Woodman (Lower School) and Sara Crisford (Juniors).
• The Women's British Legion had two pleasant occasions last week. Thirty-four members enjoyed an excellent Annual Luncheon at the Hope Anchor on Sunday; and the regular monthly meeting was most interested to hear Mrs. Megan Traice on the good work done at the St. Jude's Women's Refuge at Bexhill.
• George Roberts of the SWA at Scots Float tells us that despite the equivalent (including melting snow) of 2" of rain in 12 hours last week, there were no major flooding problems in the area apart from a few roads under water for a short time.
• Ernest Collyer's appeal for the Pamela Nash Memorial Dialysis Fund has now reached about £41.500 towards the £7,000 needed to buy one machine. The exhibition of work at the Easton Rooms was opened with a poetry reading to a crowded audience; local poets and London writers read their own work and that of others (Shakespeam to Ted Huhes), and the evening was a great success.
• Somewhat belatedly, the current issue of the RNLI "Lifeboat" lists lifeboat services throughout the country in June and July. The Rye Harbour boat went out 4 times, all in July. Lochin Marine's Brede-class boats were far from idle; the Alderney one went out 6 times, Fowey twice, Girvan 3 times, Oban 10 times and Poole three times, and the Brede which RNLI uses as a relief boat had a total of 9 services in the two months. There was a further incident when a Brede boat on passage was involved in a rescue. At least 34 people grateful to boats made in Rock Channel!
• For technical reasons, this page of the GAZEiiE is usually typed last, which gives us the chance to report on a quick saunter between photocopying to Mermaid Street to watch the BBC's film crew at work. We never thought to see Samuel Jeakes having his hair combed for him outside his wool store - but the really disconcerting thing was rounding the BBC van parked outside the Mermaid to find a corpse spreadeagled casually across the tailboard! What with wooden barrels and peat spread on the pavement slabs, it was all rather reminiscent of "Yellowbeard"... But we brought some firm news about "Mapp and Lucia" back from our walk: Geraldine Bromley has been told that the series will go out in five episodes starting on Sunday, 14 April. Woe betide anyone who fixes anything for a Sunday evening in the second half of April or early May!
TVS did come to the town on Tuesday, and their account of the parking report is likely to go out today in Coast to Coast (6 pm).
Muscular Dystrophy Association AGM, Tower Forge House, 4.30
Vidler & Co's monthly auction sale, 10
Lower School jumble sale, Ferry Road, 6.30
Movie Society (guest speaker), FEC, 7.30
... and that seems to be it for the week!
• Congratulations to David Gasson and Philippa (nee Crouch) on the birth of their daughter Alice on 22 January in Kingston, Surrey - a first grandchild for both sides of the family.
• Congratulations, too, to Richard Knight and Pam Haddon, late of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve and now of Dorchester, who were married in October.
• Bon voyage to Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Seabrook of Marley Road, who have an exciting few weeks ahead of them; they are going out to Australia, to stay near Perth with friends who emigrated from Rye some time ago - but we are assured that the Seabrooks are definitely coming back!
• The NSPCC jumble sale on Saturday raised 2236 nett; the Society is also very grateful for a final-instalment cheque for £510 presented last week by the organisers of last summer's Raft Race.
• Rye WI members are reminded that the 13 February meeting includes a craft show.
• As a result of a jumble sale and the two-night "Showbiz" presentation at Upper School before Christmas, the Rye Dance Centre has handed over to the Community Centre a cheque for C201.84 - a most welcome donation.
• According to the press book, Rye Police are still having a quiet time locally; the only entry for the week ending Monday concerns the contents of a gas meter stolen from an address in The Link on 21 January.
• Planning: none for Rye in this week's list. But a "Sold" board outside the former Weslakes building in Rye Harbour Road will presumably mean good news - and jobs? - before too long.Despite the weather, the Silver Centre raised around £75.
• A reader who is at present out of work the same situation, that every morning BBC1 carries lists of jobs available - still worth keeping an eye on? tells us, for the benefit of others in from 9 (when Breakfast TV ends) to 10.30, not, perhaps, likely to be local, but The Tower Launderette will in future close on Tuesdays as well as Sundays, until further notice. Prices will rise on 8 February by 10p a machine, and the cost of drying will also rise the following week; Mary Weaver points out that it is two years since her last price increase - and we only mention it now so that next month's customers can check their purses for the right number of 10p pieces before they leave home.
• Peter Hall of LWT says that there is still no official date fixed for the transmission of the "Mapp and Lucia" series, but there is mention of mid-April as a likely time. What with Samuel Jeakes on "Timewatch" at the beginning of the month (see page 5), the lure of the video recorder becomes a little stronger!
• Can anyone tell the Editor where to get a pen which incorporates a small torch? They are said to exist. She would be most grateful to anyone who can help, as >notes written in the dark during slide shows are often not only incoherent but also upside-down next day...
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office, and published by Mrs. Mary Owen, 2 Cyprus Place, Rye (Rye 222303). News items for inclusion are always welcome - deadline Monday afternoon, Tuesday 9 am for emergencies. The GAZETTE costs 25p weekly, and is delivered to subscribers and pick-up points on Wednesday; some scare copies are available at Squirrels, 9-13 Cinque Ports Street, and back numbers from Cyprus Place. (Copyright Mary Owen 1985)