Author: Jim Hollands

South Eastern Advertiser Rye Chronicle

Extracts from the

South Eastern Advertiser Rye Chronicle Romney Marsh and District News.

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 1894.

Accident.

As the Church Sunday School were passing by the Union at the top of Rye Hill Superintendent J. Brookham, of Ore, was driving past, when one of the banners carried by the children frightened the horse, which turned round and tried to run up the bank, but slipping, it fell over on its side, breaking the shafts. The horse was afterwards got up and found to be little hurt, and luckily the only damage done was the breaking of the shafts. Continue reading South Eastern Advertiser Rye Chronicle

Pauperism in Rye

Late Victorian & Early Edwardian Rye

By “Rya”

Pauperism remained an unresolved social problem at the opening of the twentieth century. Social reform in this county was confined to filing the most glaring gaps in the existing social system. The bed-rock of social provision was to be found in the Poor Law, first enacted in the time of the Tudors, and re-enacted Continue reading Pauperism in Rye

The Rye Mill

 

Rye Mill
Rye Mill

Actual documentary evidence on the history of Rye Mill is virtually non-existent. It was the subject of Victorian mezzotints and oleographs, but beyond that visual and literary records are silent. Whether a mill existed on the present site earlier than, say, 1850, is a matter of pure conjecture. We do know, however, that long before the Webb family, who used the mill for baking and bread-making before and after the Second War, came into residence the buildings had been given over to storing grain. Probably the last flour actually produced there was sold either before or during the First World War. Then the bakery was at the Mill Cottage – the old tall chimney of the bakehouse can be seen in the photographs taken in the 1920s. Continue reading The Rye Mill

Tommy Sinden

Tommy Sinden Dies in Tasmania

Many older readers will remember Tom ‘Tommy’ Sinden who recently died
in Tasmania aged 83.
Tom Sinden, older brother of Francis Sinden of North Salts, was born
in Rye in 1922. He was educated in Rye and took up an apprenticeship
as a painter and decorator on leaving school at 14. The war came along
and prevented Tom from completing his apprenticeship. He joined the
Territorial Army as a bugler. In 1939, at the age of seventeen, he
was mobilised with many more local lads and went to war. He served
in many theatres of the war until demobilisation in 1946.
Tom did various jobs around Rye in the years after the war but decided
to emigrate on the Australian £10 scheme in 1955.
He lived and worked near Melbourne. On retiring he moved again, this
time to Tasmania, where he lived out his final years doing charity
work.

Miss Welfare

Freda Mary Welfare: 1905-2005

Freda was born in Robertsbridge in 1905 where her father was landlord of “The New Eight Bells”. In 1912 her father died and the family split up. Her mother and two brothers went to Reading where there were family members, by Freda came to live with a favourite aunt and uncle in Ferry Road. The uncle had a tobacconist shop in Landgate. Continue reading Miss Welfare

Ernest Charles Apps

Ernest Charles Apps

(1927-2004)

A Rye Character

by R Wylson

Irascible, intelligent, cantankerous, scurrilous, interesting, perverse, opinionated, cultured, argumentative, frugal, irreverent. These are all adjectives used to describe Ernie Apps, who, by universal agreement, was indeed a Rye character. Continue reading Ernest Charles Apps

Rye At War With Rother

“Rother No Good to Man Nor Beast” Angry residents packed Rye Town Hall on Tuesday 7 December for what was probably the most important, specially convened meeting to be held in the historic building since World War Two. Continue reading Rye At War With Rother

Jimper’s Jottings January 2005

January 2005

As I write these jottings in the middle of January I ponder over the change in the weather that we have experienced over the past few years. The world of nature is going mad around me. Spring should arrive in April but these days we hear reports on television of strange things happening. Like the brood of Thrushes hatched in Brighton near the Pavilion around Christmas. I reported last month of the family of Blackbirds living in my garden. Continue reading Jimper’s Jottings January 2005

Christmas Arrived Early This Year

By John Wallbank

I certainly hope that on the evening of the 23rd of December, a lot of Ryers ears were burning! There I was at my place of work here in Wellington, New Zealand, when my wife rang to tell me that one of my old Rye former footballing buddies from way back had been on the phone to her and wanted to meet up with me. Continue reading Christmas Arrived Early This Year