There is still nothing official to record about the bypass. But we heard recently about a throughway proposal which is so incredible that we would not report it at all if our source had not been so impeccable (and worried).
This route would run alongside the railway on the town side all the way from Winchelsea to the far side of Rye. Never mind the housing involved or the supermarket or the new car-parking; never mind the bisection of the town's population; never mind the future of the Oasis - Rye's only place for under-pub-age young to divert themselves; but consider the position at the station. The building itself is listed, and would be left alone - but BR would be asked to move the railway
-... (this space allows for a whole row of exclamation marks)
so passengers would work their way through the supermarket and bus traffic down to the station, buy a ticket, and then cross the bypass to get to the train.
This would of course mean either a footbridge or an underpass; and people who now lug their Hastings shopping over the present small footbridge will appreciate the idiocy of such an idea. At least under existing arrangements those with problems can - if they hang about long enough and manage to attract the attention of the man on duty (there is still no bell) - get the barriers opened so that they can cross on the level. But there is of course no way that BR staff would be able to lollipop the flood of French lorries so that poor old Mrs. Owen could totter across a throughway on the way to her train. In effect it would mean that the railway, the town's lifeline, became unusable for older or disabled people, or indeed for anyone heavily laden; the next stage, of course, would be that its receipts dropped and the line could once more be at risk. At best, the whole station could be deemed non-viable and turned into "that pretty tourist shop at the corner of Supermarket Road”!
(We hope that our source was pulling our leg about this. But it was not the kind of source that usually pulls legs...)
• At 7 Cinque Ports Street, Tina Popple of Winchelsea Beach has just opened a children's-wear shop, "Young Ideas" - from babies to Juniors, including school uniforms for the local primaries. Tina has aimed her stock at price- and quality-conscious mothers, rather than doting grandmothers looking out for expensive hand-smocked dresses and coats with little velvet collars! She has a big range of day and night wear, and looks forward to getting to know her customers so that they can tell her what they want in future. (Tina's mother Linda is - as she nicely put it - "in reduced circumstances" in the smaller half of the shop, with her Peddler's Pitch stock concentrated into tightly-packed shelves!) Both halves will be open regularly, 9.30 to 5.30, closing between 1 and 2 and from 1 on Tuesdays. Phone Rye 226488, evenings.
• Because they missed Marjorie Rust's rail of second-hand children's clothes at what used to be Crafty, Vivienne Challans and Margaret Stoodley are holding "party evenings" on the second Wednesday of every month, starting next week (10 December). Anyway to begin with, the parties - coffee and biscuits provided - will take place at 7.30 at 5 Lea Avenue, at the river end of the road which runs past the Estate shops. Selling will be on a commission basis, and goods brought along one month will be processed for sale a month later. People who can't get along on a Wednesday evening can ring Vivienne at Rye to arrange collection. This scheme is for children's clothes only, and Vivienne and Margaret have already laid in a good selection for next Wednesday's opening session.
All Rye's young mums will join us in wishing good luck to both enterprises.
2.
Mrs. Margaret McKenna, who died at Peasmarsh Place on 25 November, was 88. The widow of Group Captain JF McKenna, she came to live in Rye more than 30 years ago, and at one time was a member of the hospital car service team. Mrs. McKenna leaves no immediate family, but there will be much sympathy for her friend Miss Diana Mann, with whom she shared a home until recently. The funeral takes place today, Wednesday, at 2.30 at Playden Church.
Mrs. Edith Shipton of Devonport House would like to thank friends for all the letters, flowers and messages sent at the time of her husband George's death. The sympathy expressed has been a great comfort to her and their family at this sad time.
The Christmas show at the Easton Rooms is one of the most attractive the gallery has ever staged - and Eric Money only got back from Canada at the start of the week during which it was hung (if the word can be applied to so varied a display of pictures and artefacts). All the gallery's favourite artists and craftsmen have contributed work, and even so there is room for some new names - we noticed particularly some large paintings in the Chinese style by Wendy Yeo, and a charming group by Sue Crosby Jones (SC Jones of the Rye Society of Artists summer exhibition). But it is really invidious to mention any names, because there are so many, all proudly attached to work of extremely professional standard which cannot fail to tempt buyers looking for Christmas presents for other people to give them! The show runs until 31 December, and the gallery is open from 10.30 to 5 (closed 1 to 2) and on Sunday afternoons.
John Royle says yes - and he should know; he has his own yacht and gets feedback from fellow-mariners at home and abroad, as well as seeing the question from the viewpoint of the Harbour of Rye Advisory Committee. "The number of people I meet in sailing circles who are afraid of coming to Rye (particularly those from abroad) - because they are worried about 'drying out' and will their boats stay upright? - is phenomenal. There is at present nowhere where a modern fin-keeled yacht can stay afloat in Rye Harbour. With a marina there will be. The one thing neither the Harbour Master nor I are in any doubt over is the possibility of not filling the berths (provided the price is not set ludicrously high as at Ramsgate and Newhaven). Whether we need another 250- 300 in addition to the 120 berths provided by our Sailing Club scheme might however be more doubtful. The feasibility study (incidentally) will state that our Club scheme should be financially viable and attractive to a develop a partner without any housing, shops and saunas!"
Non-sailor William Kendall advises caution. Writing from Winchester, he says "The River Ramble not far from here is so thick with an armada of unused boats, with their mast-lines tinkling like beer-cans at a West Indies test match, that you can't actually see the river bank at all for three miles. What is infinitely worse, multi-storey 'boat garages' have sprung up, further defacing the riverside; vandalism, with such a treasure chest of unattended valuables available, is rife (tying up more police than anywhere else in Hants except Havant) and the 'benefit' to the local community has yet to be felt, I think."
In his report to the Harbour of Rye Advisory Committee's October meeting, the Harbourmaster said that there were 27 boats (14 of them fishing vessels) on the waiting list for Rye moorings. This, of course, did not include the demand from visitors, and visitors do bring trade to the town in various ways. If the Sailing Club proposals can provide 120 affordable berths without the financial support of any housing - and particularly if the same goes for the North Point scheme - it looks as if the town could be spared the prospects so vividly described by Mr. Kendall, and we could get what is needed without any weekender housing at all.
This correspondence is not closed, and we shall be glad to have other views.
3 - THE RYE GAZETTE, 3 December 1986
Readers will be aware how many calls there have been on local pockets from various good causes in our small community during the past couple of weeks. Local pockets must be almost bottomless, because...
The Catholic Church's Christmas Sale raised an extremely welcome £860 for church funds at the FE Centre on the 22nd, the expenses having been entirely covered by an earlier parish event.
The Rye Hospital League of Friends event at the Town Hall on the 27th took well over £700 from raffle, auction and refreshments during the evening.
Rye Playgroup Christmas Fair (to the astonishment of its committee and with the help of Father Christmas) took comfortably more than £500 on the 29th.
The Playden Church Christmas Fair on the 15th at the FE Centre made £475 profit (and we reported last week the £300 taken at the Town Hall a week later for Playden and the Sussex Historic Churches Trust jointly).
The Winchelsea & District Floral Group's delightfully pretty display and sale at the George all day Saturday brought in £425 - of which £75, the Proceeds of the raffle, have been given to the Rye Branch of Mencap.
Finally, the Community Centre's own jumble sale on the 22nd raised £125 for Centre funds.
There have been several smaller events in the town, whose results we haven't heard; so it seems reasonable to suggest that altogether somewhere around £3,500 has been raised in the in the past fortnight or so. In addition to this, there were two Christmas events in Winchelsea last Saturday, both doubtless supported by Rye people. The NSPCC coffee morning at Cleveland House, organised by Marguerite Fuller, brought in £888. The Greyfriars sale the same afternoon raised £850, and Joan Dobson tells us that this will provide, among other things, extra Christmas cheer not only for the residents but for the home's day-care patients and other elderly people in the area as well.
Generously plied with excellent sandwiches in the ballroom of the George on Tuesday evening, NSPCC committee members and Raft Race supporters were joined by Lions for the presentation of a large (in every sense) cheque to Mr. Willis, the new Regional Organiser of the NSPCC. This was his first such event, he told the ladies of the committee - and it was certainly a good start, because
the cheque which Frank Palmer handed over was for £692! Even this was not all; the total amount raised for NSPCC funds on the Raft Race afternoon was £895, including £350 given by the Lions as the proceeds of their fete at the Harbour during the event. Mr. Willis thanked Raft Race organiser Mrs. Dianne James, and also the Lions; he is aware how much support the Society has from the Rye Branch, but with 37,000 children helped by the Society last year, and costs rising from £12m to £1.4m this year (80% comes from voluntary donations), he urged his hearers not to rest on their laurels!
The repainting of the Postern Gate surgery is now nearly finished, and there is repainting at the other end of Cinque Ports Street too, where Condons have already made a quite remarkable improvement to the appearance of Stocks, inside and out. The team works very fast, and heavy furniture is shuffled round the ground floor from hour to hour; goods piled in the window on Saturday were not, alas, indicative of a memorable jumble sale but were merely making room for the new carpet to be laid. The footpath from the road up Conduit Hill to the Community Centre is nearly finished, lacking only the final layer of stone chippings to disguise the black tarmac. At the Post Office, Rotary have given one of their stout seats, now firmly bedded into concrete; and after eleven months, the clock in the window is back! (The Conservation Society is concerned about the lack of planning permission to cut down the Devonport House tree - other tree-owners in the Conservation Area are warned.)
4.
41 years ago, on 25 August 1945, Ted Hickmott of Tillingham Avenue joined the staff of the firm now known as Dawes Prentice & Herington. In his early days there, much of his work was in connection with the affairs of the Rye & Win-Chelsea Savings Bank; he was one of its joint actuaries by the time it merged with the TSB in 1967 - and was kind enough to send us details of its history for GAZETTE no. 188. It is as a legal executive in the probate department of the firm that Mr. Hickmott now retires - but what is a loss to the solicitors' staff is a gain to St. Mary's, where he is a sidesman. The hard-pressed team who guard the door of the tower in the tourist season will be delighted at his retirement, and doubtless he will be helping the church in other ways too. Mr. Hickmott and his wife Margery have a great many friends in the town - all of whom will wish them many happy years ahead.
• On 15 November Rye Lions took four coaches full of senior citizens, over 200 altogether, to Eastbourne to a special Lions Variety Afternoon at the Winter Gardens. They collected guests in Rye, Camber, Iden, Peasmarsh and Northiam - and treated everyone to Christmas cake and sherry before going home.
The Lions are taking their Christmas float round the area again this year not in Rye itself, because of Rotary's Christmas tree in Market Road. Dressed as snowmen, they are visiting all the local villages (having postered their arrival beforehand) to collect cash for charity, with music and general jollity. (The snowmen outfits are very appropriate - they are clearly visible to passing traffic!)
We were told about these activities at the George after the NSPCC presentation - a particularly suitable place, because the very first meeting of Lions International in Britain, just at the start of the movement's spread across the Atlantic, was held there in 1949 (though the Rye branch is a lot younger than that).
• Round Table members have been busy recently, too. The Table meets on a Wednesday, so all the Tablers were available to organise the blood-testing session for the national Bone Marrow Appeal last week; they are grateful to the nurses and doctors who took the samples, and also to the Saltings Hotel for the use of its downstairs room. A number of prospective donors turned up without notice, which threw the appointment system into confusion and increased the numbers beyond what Round Table had allowed for; but those who could not be tested then and there had their names and addresses taken for future use.
Round Tablers also toured pubs in Rye and the villages collecting for the BBC "Children in Need" Appeal; as a result, £500 went to the national Round Table collection for the cause.
Our remarks last week about the standard of window-dressing here by some of the multiples have brought no response from either Woolworths or Seeboard. But the manager of Presto tells us sadly that it is not at local level that national chains don't care what people think. He has had a lot of flak from Rye people about the concentration of posters, and is trying to persuade his head office to allow him to cut it down - but the decision is not his. He does care very much what people think about his shop, inside and out - and if they don't like something, he hopes they will tell him so, so that even if he can't alter it he can at least explain the reason.
Dates?
David Arscott of Radio Sussex is planning a third book about the county, a day-to-day calendar of past events. Apart from the lifeboat disaster, he has nothing from Rye. Can readers with spare time for research (or simply a better memory than the Editor) help him? Write to BBC, Radio Sussex, 26 Gildredge Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN21 4SA.
5.
On Saturday afternoon, Father Christmas duly arrived at the station, and was met by a big crowd and a dear little Singer Junior Tourer dating back to 1928 with Miss Rye in the back seat (and very nice too, said someone enviously!). Avice and Trevor Cornelius kindly lent their cherished car for the occasion. The building materials for the new loos provided a convenient vantage point for the more athletic bystanders (including Alan Jones and his camera). Gus Gale, in his Town Crier's uniform, heralded the honoured guest's arrival; the Chamber of Trade had hoped for music from the TPS band, but this wasn't possible to arrange. While the car went round by the Landgate, most of the crowd nipped up Market Road to be in front at the George, where balloons were handed out. (The Woolworths pumps had still not been returned, but Derek Phillips came to the rescue with an electric air-line.) Traffic in Lion Street was stopped to enable Father Christmas to travel by car up to the Town Hall beneath the newly-switched on lights; there he turned on the Christmas tree, and was joined by members of the St. Mary's choir and a number of the Town Councillors for carol-singing - particularly good this year, we thought, and with song-sheets provided for the crowd at the foot of the steps.
As usual, the small children - many riding on father's shoulders, or even on grandfather's - were entranced by the whole event; as usual, Father Christmas conducted the carols with great gusto; and finally, as usual, the Mayor invited him, Councillors, choir and other guests to take a glass of sherry and a mince-pie in the Town Hall before (as usual) his reindeer arrived on the Town Hall roof to collect him from the chimney-top. Not as usual, the mincepies were made personally by the Mayor and her chef husband in her kitchen in Lea Avenue a hundred of them, and each one a professional job!
The lights are strung all along the main shopping areas, and look both simple and pretty. This year the Chamber voted to put the work in the hands of Robin Paine as contractor - but on Thursday evening Chamber and contracting staff alike were very busy, when one long stint saw all the work done. Tony Wills was interested to realise that all the buildings to which the lights are normally attached had been repainted since last time - and all the hooks had thoughtfully been repainted too!
Two Rye applications in the current list both apply to the High Street. The Monastery Guest House has a change-of-use to a restaurant plus five contained flats above; and there is another proposal which will certainly add to the attraction of the street. When no. 11 had what is now the Old Coach House as its stable block - and possibly at one time no. 10 as its dower house the entrance serving all three was closed off from the road by tall wooden gates (now part of the Festings' garage). No. 11's iron railings were scrapped during the war; the architect Duncan Wylson, who lived there later, designed the replacements, but was never able to run to gates as well, as he and Mrs. Wylson would have liked. Now Conrad and Rae Festing want to instal wrought- .iron gates - made by the Appledore blacksmith, and using the existing pillars. The Festings and Mrs. Barton hope that this will put an end to the disgusting use of the entry as a public toilet - by small children taken short during the day and by lazy men at night!
The FRAG Christmas party on 12 December is to be held at the Town Hall instead of the Stormont Studios two minutes' walk away; gratified by the attendance at recent functions, the committee are now worried that there won't be room in the gallery for guests and the fashion parade of period dresses which will be the highlight of the evening. The Town Hall will, of course, be ideal for the parade, which will be at about 7.30 (the proceedings begin at 6.30, and admission for members and guests costs £2). Members are asked to pass word around about the change, since it is not possible to contact everyone at this late stage; there will of course be a notice outside the gallery on the night.
6.
Plans for one of the last sites in the centre of Rye which is likely to be available for development - the former Winter's Dairy yard and the land behind it - have gone to Rother, and appear in the weekly list which came out yesterday; the number is RR86 2557, and the plans will be available in the Council Offices here as usual.
Drawn up by Ralph Wood of Le Fevre Wood & Royle's Hastings office (who sent us an advance copy), they show a new building running the full width of the site. A three-storey block takes the place of the present stable-type building in the dairy yard, with garaging at ground-floor level and flats above. Built in one with it, under one long roof, is a further three-storey block on the land behind the yard, also containing flats (seven flats in all). But as the garden ground inside the Town Wall is considerably higher than the street level outside it, the effect of the building seen from Cinque Ports Street is of a four-storey block, dominating the ex-Gassons warehouse next door which has for a very long time been the main feature of an otherwise rather unremarkable length of road.
The land behind already has planning permission for one dwelling, and the plans show a two-storey house there. The original application for this, made some years ago and kept renewed, must have included an access into The Mint, but this does not appear on the present plans; what does appear is parking or garaging in the dairy yard for eight cars (one for each household), all of which will need to turn into and out of an already difficult stretch of roadway.
Puzzled about the implications for the Town Wall, we were invited round to the back of the shop terrace next door to have a look over the (non-existent) fence. The stone-built wall runs at garden level just under half-way along the back of the present building; then newer brickwork takes over (and what happened to the stone is obvious - it was used at some point to build the side wall of the stable!). At street level, stone-work (whether or not Town Wall) forms the whole of the back wall of the building (and doubtless accounts for why it was so cold and clammy there in the winter...) So any development which covers both yard and garden is bound to swallow up completely an identifiable portion of Rye's mediaeval heritage.
Since the application is for outline permission only (Mr. Wood is acting for the executors of Mrs. Dorothea Taylor, who are selling both sites), there is no call for us to comment at this stage on the detailed design of the buildings shown. But outline permission would presumably include the overall height of the development, the number of dwellings (and hence the number of cars), and also the treatment of the Town Wall.
There is a further consideration. In 1860 the Cinque Ports Street site was listed as "buildings and yard" (the occupier was Samuel Peacocke, and the property belonged to Charles Pix Meryon's father-in-law Stanes Brockett). We also recall seeing a drawing, made some 30 years or so earlier, which showed either the present building or a very similar one. So it seems clear that the commercial tradition of the site goes back at least 150 years. The whole of that end of Cinque Ports Street, from Market Road/Station Approach to the Wool Shop/Bannisters, is in commercial use at street level except for one terrace house. With the arrival of Cinque Ports Stationers, Condons, the supermarket, Rye Wholefoods, and Young Ideas, the street is definitely on the way up in commercial terms. So surely it is shops which are needed in the old dairy yard - preferably shops with a loading layby (as at Squirrels, further along) rather than a block of flats with private parking in front of it? (And what about the people in the little houses in The Mint - do they want even a three-storey block of flats at the bottom of their little gardens?)
One good thing did come out of our investigations. Looking at the derelict garden site, we noticed a man's bike dumped in a corner. It turned out to be the one stolen from outside the Bell Inn several weeks ago!
7.
• Last time a reader left something on the roof of her car and drove off, the GAZETTE was instrumental in returning it to her. Can we do the same again (for someone different, we hasten to say)? This package fell off the roof of a car last Thursday mid-morning, somewhere between the Hope Anchor garages and the bottom of Market Road; it was a piece of embroidery mounted on a board, a little under 18" square and wrapped in clear plastic. Worked in the Jacobean style, it showed Brickwall in Northiam and bore the dates 1666 and 1986 - and was intended by its maker as a present for that house. It took her nine months to make, and she is so sad about its loss; if anyone can help her over its whereabouts, please the GAZETTE.
• The first Peacocke Club draw of the new school year brought prizes as follows: Mrs. Boyce (wife of Peter Boyce of TPS, no. 15), £30; John Pope of Brede (no. 24), £20; and Mrs. Bayley (no. 59), also of Brede, £15. The Club was formed some years ago to enable friends of Thomas Peacocke School as well as parents to contribute to PTA funds; they also, of course, stand a chance of a prize in the monthly draw. The annual membership is £12; parents will know how to join, but grandparents, old scholars and friends generally can send their subscriptions to the Treasurer, Mr. R. Hunt, c/o the PTA at Upper School office.
• Mermaid Street will be closed to through traffic on Monday, 5 January, for approximately three months. As we reported a fortnight ago, this is to allow the relaying of the cobbles over large areas. "The actual point of closure" says ESCC Highways Bexhill office "will be determined by where the cobbles are being repaired at the time", and drivers will have to get used to reversing out (or in, as they prefer) until the work is done. Doubtless there will be road signs.
• Rother's direct-debit ratepayers may well be relieved to know that the Council's Policy and Resources Committee turned down the treasurer's report which would have altered the payment arrangements (GAZETTE no. 203). George Shackleton, who is on the committee, tells us that unless someone at full Council feels strongly enough to resurrect the proposal, it will now be dropped, and direct-debit payers will continue to pay their rates in twelve monthly instalments.
• The Freight Express-Seacon window at the corner of Lion Street now houses an attractive display of the photographs which Andrew Manktelow took on his recent sail-training cruise in the "Malcolm Miller" - Andrew was sent on the cruise by the John Williams Memorial Trust. The pictures include some striking ones of the ship under full sail, some lovely views of her ports of call, and also more domestic scenes aboard - plus a map of her course, and literature about the Sail Training Association's schooners generally.
• Thomas Peacocke Lower School's Christmas entertainment this year combines Christmas music with an interpretation of Oscar Wilde's fairy story "The Selfish Giant" in song and dance. For the first time in many years this takes place at Lower School, rather than the much bigger Upper School hall, on 9 and 10 December at 7.30; some tickets are still available from Mrs. Davies (£l for adults, 50p for children and OAPs). Fifty or so pupils are taking part in this festive entertainment, and the Art Department and the children themselves have put much effort into the set and props.
• Rother asks all voters to check the draft Electoral Registers which were published last week. They are available in Rye at the Post Office, Library and Council Offices. The check should be made before 16 December. If you are not on the final register, you can't vote - not only in Parliamentary elections (and there could well be one before February 1988, the end of the period covered by the new register) but also in local government elections - and our Pother and Town Councillors all come up for election in May of next year, so the 1987/8 Register is a particularly important one. The date is 7 May - after the May Day bank holiday when the Mayoring actuale been held in recent years - so the Mayoring date will have to be later, after the makeup of the new Town Council is announced.
Thursday, 4th Parents' evening, TPS, 3rd year
Museum Association party, TH (members and guests)
Friday, 5th Vidler & Co's monthly auction sale, 10
Rye Dance Centre's "Showbiz III", Upper School, 7.15
Movie Society "At Home to Friends", FEC, 7.30 National Trust Christmas supper (members), CC
Saturday, 6th St. John Nursing Cadets Christmas coffee morning, Conduit Hill HQ, 10
Women's British Legion Christmas Fair, Red Cross, 10
Blue Peter Appeal sale, CC, 10 (GAZETTE no. 203)
Labour Party coffee morning, FEC, 10
"Showbiz III", Upper School, 7.15
Tuesday, 9th TPS Lower School Christmas entertainment, Lower School, 7.30 (see page 7)
Rye Festival Council Annual Meeting, TH, 8
Wednesday, 10th Rye WI, Annual Meeting, FEC, 7
Christmas entertainment, Lower School, 7.30
"Amahl and the Night Visitors" (New Sussex Opera), St. Mary's 8, tickets from EMBS or door - GAZETTE no. 202.
• When David Jobling and Catherine Keynes were both pupils at TPS, they lived in Peasmarsh and Beckley respectively. Catherine's family later moved up north, and it was in her home town of Borwick in Lancashire that wedding bells rang out for the couple on Saturday. David's best man was his elder brother Steven. Catherine is on the staff of the M o D, David is an optician, and they will be living in Sevenoaks.
• The MSS Christmas card (GAZETTE no. 201) has been such a runaway best-seller that out of the original print order of a thousand there are only about 50 left; those who want one should therefore waste no time. The shops selling them display a poster - or ring Rye 222086 or call at 22 Ferry Road.
• Rye Racers hold their annual Christmas Party for senior citizens on Sunday, 14 December, at Upper School. With the assistance of the Ashford Accordion Band, they expect to be entertaining up to 170 elderly peo-nle for three hours.
• Vidlers' sale on Friday has some items recalling Rye's history: a drawing of Pump Street by L. Perugini, well remembered by many readers; a 1795 long-case clock by Daniel Gill; and two pieces of old Rye Pottery hop-pattern ware. The sale's star attraction (with no Rye connection) is a watercolour dated 1862 and signed by T. Sidney Cooper.
• A reminder about the Save-a-Life resuscitation class (GAZETTE no. 200) at the Clinic on 11 December from 7 to 9 - bookable in advance, with a fee of £2. If you can't find one of the forms, ring Hastings 441933 instead to say you will b, coming. They need to know numbers.
• After the worries about the water cupply (GAZETTE no. 201) it might be comforting to know that it is now possible to buy tea specially blended to suit
• Rye water. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens at Rye Wholefoods sent samples of local tap water to a firm of London tea importers, who then produced a blend of Kenyan and Indian teas which will brew a really good breakfast cuppa within the town wall. Try it and see.
• The GAZETTE will not appear on 24 or 31 December. If you want publicity for anything over that period, please let the Editor know as soon as possible - there are only two issues to go. Subscriptions details next week.
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office, published by Mrs. Mary Owen, 2 Cyprus Place, Rye, East Sussex, TN31 7DR (0797 222303), and printed by Cinque Ports Stationers of Rye. The paper costs 30p and is delivered to subscribers on Wednesdays. (Copyright Mary Owen 1986)