“I don’t mind dying as long as I am not around when it happens.”
The words above were one of Spike Milligan’s ‘off the cuff ‘ answers. He also claimed he wanted to outlive Harry Secombe as he didn’t want him singing at his funeral. Continue reading Farewell Spike
Three years ago, Stuart Pope and I joined the ‘Convoy Of Hope’ driving trucks full of locally collected aid to Kosovo. This was run by a small privately run charity called British Humanitarian Aid and comprised of vehicles – small vans, trucks, a coach and an articulated lorry driven by volunteers from all over the country. Continue reading Old Pictures Raise £1,500
One day at work we were expecting a photographer from the magazine “Sussex Life” to take some photos of June and I doing our respective jobs. I was going to throw small mugs, once I had finished off things I had made the day before, so didn’t start throwing things until very late in the morning. Continue reading Rye Pottery
By Clifford Jordan
From October 2001 “Rye’s Own”
A late nineteenth century postcard of the original Old Billy Pub situated at Camber opposite the Golf Club House which was weather boarded with a stove pipe chimney on the left and destroyed by fire in 1893 Continue reading The Old Billy
I grew up knowing Archibald Trill as The Man From The Pru. When I met him recently at his Marley Road address and learned he was 95 I was more than surprised, he looked almost exactly as I remembered him way back in the sixties. Continue reading The Man From the Pru
HOME GUARDS KEEP WATCH ON A NAZI DIVE BOMBER This remarkable picture turned up at Rye Auction Galleries. It shows a Home Guard contingent (possibly from Rye) who were first on the scene when a Stuka Dive Bomber made a forced landing in a field near Pett on August 31st. 1940. Continue reading Dads Army at Pett.
Percy Lawrence Mitchell, known universally in Rye by the young people of the fifties and sixties as Peter Mitchell was another outstanding Rye character who left his mark on this town. Continue reading Peter Mitchell
Winnie Hollands died on Sunday 10 June 2001. The last of this article was written on the 6 June 2001.
By Winnie Hollands
“The war in Europe is over”. When those words came over the radio we all cheered. Rye was ablaze with bunting and naval ratings from their base at the New Road School charged around the town kissing all the girls and attempting to drink the pubs dry. One sailor climbed the front of the The Olde Bell Inn and tied a rope round the bell tongue and sounded the bell for all his might, until the tongue came out, crashed down and almost killed him. Two Navel Officers careered round the town in a red triumph sports car until they hit a curb and broke the front suspension. It was a mad, glorious day. Continue reading Winnie – The Last Article
On Wednesday 2 February 1983 a tidal surge due to weather conditions
in the North Sea meant that what should have just been a rather high
tide suddenly grew an extra 4 ft, and at 16.5 ft came over the shingle
bank at the Broomhill end of the village, blocking the road and cutting
off the electricity. Rye fireman were down there pumping out until
well into the morning, and a considerable amount of damage was done
– some of it to holiday homes whose owners could not be immediately
traced; more than a dozen houses were effected. This Wednesday tide
was the highest ever recorded for the area, but the SWA’s sea defences
held everywhere and the only serious damage was at Camber.
The golf course presented a most attractive scene – less attractive
when the water finally receded leaving its debris to be cleared from
the greens. On the other side of the river, there was an inch of water
over the floor of the Rye Harbour Sailing Club, and dinghies normally
parked beside the clubhouse well clear of the river were washed to
the Camber side, one ending up on the old tramway track. A fishing
boat was blown on to the harbour wall, and had to be pumped out when
the wind capsized her back into the falling river.
In fact it was fortunate that the tidal surge did not come two days
earlier, on the Monday when the predicted tide was even higher, The
police and members of the public spent the middle of that day pushing
back into the Tillingham channel boats which might otherwise have
been stranded on the quayside when the tide went down. Tidal surges
are not that uncommon, but they only occasionally coincide with particularly
high tides and otherwise pass unnoticed by the layman. The last spectacular
(and tragic) occasion was 50 years ago when vast sections of the Isle
of Grain were over run by the sea.
Descriptions taken from “The Rye Gazette” dated 9 February 1983.
Councillor Alan Dickinson was first elected to Rye Town Council in
1991. A local boy who attended the Thomas Peacocke he works in his
own right as a building surveyor. Continue reading Your Men at the Town Hall
