By John Hodges
When all that lay beyond the Castle Cliff was open country and the White Rock projected into the sea, the site of Wellington Square was then known as the Priory Field. Continue reading The Castle Hotel Wellington Square
Month: November 2010
Pier Disaster
By Ron Fellows
Eugenius Birch designed the 138-year-old Hastings Pier, badly burnt on Monday night, 4th October 2010. The Earl of Granville opened it on the Bank Holiday, 5th.August 1872 and hailed it as the “peerless pier a pier without a pier.” The Pier suffered another fire in 1917, which burnt down a spectacular Pavilion. Continue reading Pier Disaster
Like the Death of an Old Friend
There have been moments in my long life when I have despaired of the human race. The morning of Tuesday 6 October, at the time of hearing the news that Hastings Pier was destroyed and burning, was one of them. Arson was suspected. I thought back to the hundreds of Saturday nights I spent at dances on the Pier with my friends, back in the 1950’s and 60’s, and remembered the great fun we had in that amazing domed ballroom. It was like the death of an old friend. Why should anyone want to kill the Pier? She was old and frail and thanks to years of neglect, in dire need of restoration. Continue reading Like the Death of an Old Friend
Bombed by Both Sides
by Graham Watson. From the November 2010 issue of Rye’s Own
I was born in Rye East Sussex, in May 1936, and lived at Godfrey’s Row which was a terrace of five houses situated opposite the Pipemaker’s Arms Public House, in Winchelsea Road. In 1940 the first kits of the Anderson shelter, the outdoor type, which consisted of a large hole dug by the householder, with curved sections of corrugated iron bolted together and placed in the hole to form the walls and roof . The earth which had been dug out to from the hole was then thrown back over the shelter to give it added protection. Continue reading Bombed by Both Sides
Rye Bonfires of the Past
Recapture Moments from the Past, Worthy of Preservation.
Sixty years ago in 1945 the Second World War had just reached it’s terrible conclusion with the discovery of the death camps in Europe and the dropping of two atom bombs on Japan. Continue reading Rye Bonfires of the Past