I started work in the Rates Office, then at 107 High Street (now the Easton Rooms) in 1936. Mr. Cyril Powell, Rating and Valuation Officer was my boss and Mr. Ambrose Huxstep my Senior. Mr. Huxstep and I were responsible for writing all Continue reading The War Years & Beyond
The 1914-18 War seems far off to many of us now but there are still Ryers around that have memories of those terrible days. Continue reading World War One
November the fifteenth is the seventy fourth anniversary of The Mary Stanford Disaster. All seventeen crew of the Rye Harbour Lifeboat were lost in 1928 when going to the aid of The Alice of Riga. A Memorial service will be held on the 17th November at 3pm, in Rye Harbour Church. Continue reading Rye Harbour Lifeboat Disaster
Len Fuggle brought in this wartime photograph of the 304 Squadron (Rye) A.T.C. pictured outside the south door of St. Mary’s Church.
How many can you recognise? Len put names to many of them. All the lads came from the town or the immediate villages. Continue reading 304 Air Training Squadron 1941
It was a sad day for the Employeees of Rye Cattle Market Company today.(May 8 2002) A worker was seen kneeling on the ground deftly manouvering an oxy-acetalyne cutter through the bars of an iron cattle pen in his effort to dismantle it. A huge fork lift then lifted the pile of this old metal to a lorry which carted it off to be scrapped. But can the history of Rye Cattle Market be that easily scrapped?
The iron according to Larry Cook, one of the staff, was over one hundred and forty years old. He reflected briefly on the history of the market explaining that before about 1860, when the Market was resited at its present home transactions were conducted in Market Street outside the Town Hall where cattle, sheep, and lambs were driven from surrounding farms to be sold. Livestock roamed loose in the street, there were no iron pens then.
Frank Igglesten remembers one occasion before the war in about 1931 when bullocks were herded toward The Cattle Market in its present location; the main route was up the Landgate and down Tower Street but a bullock decided to enjoy the view off Hilder’s Cliff and went through the Landgate Tower entrance up the High Street and through the plate glass window of Langton’s shop (now Adams).
Wyn Vincent whose family lived in the railroad house at the top of the station remembers her mother telling her to close the gate on Wednesdays as the sheep would run into their garden and ruin it. She also asserts that most local butchers would be amongst the bidders to buy cattle and then take them to their own slaughter houses to be butchered. There were three slaughter houses in Rye. There was one to the left hand side of Ashbee the butchers; the only butcher left in Rye today. Another had an entrance in Cinque Ports Street and supplied the meat directly to Neaves butcher shop in the Mint and a third was at the bottom of the landgate.
Now it seems those hundreds of years of history have been consigned to the scrapheap. A sad day indeed.
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Harry Davis, well known Rye journalist wrote this Operatic Recitation in memory of the men lost on the Rye Trawler Sweet Hope. It was performed by members of Rye Dramatic and Operatic Society
Recited by Mr. Wm. Dawes, at the Entertainment by the Rye Dramatic & Operatic Society in aid of the “Sweet Hope” Fund, January 1895. Continue reading The Loss of The Sweet Hope
There was a time when the Royal Ensign flew over Rye Town Hall. Thirty-three years ago Queen Elizabeth II came to visit Rye and was given such a warm welcome by the people of this Town. Continue reading The Queen in Rye
An interesting photograph loaned by a gentleman visitor to Rye. Who are these men? Could they be the Station Master and Engine Driver ? Continue reading The Rye Train
By Kenneth Clark
Reprinted from a 1967 Issue of Rye’s Own
“In 1859”, wrote H. P. Clarke in his “Guide and History of Rye”, printed in 1861, “the houses were numbered and the names of the street were foolishly altered; as events in history often give names to streets. Continue reading Street Names of Rye
After we moved to Kings Avenue, life for our family improved a great deal, especially for our Mother, no more to light on Mondays. no more tin bath, and a toilet across the yard. War soon arrived and we all suffered a harrowing time in Rye, I remember going down to the Mint to fetch our gas-masks. I should think the boxes became the start of graffiti – the things we wrote on them! We didn’t go to school for many weeks, many having gone to Bedford. Continue reading Telling of the adventures of Ryers Rona & Geoff Sheridan
