It was astonishing that anyone should suggest that gas was not made in Rye, but only stored. IT gave me the thought, however, that the strand in Rye had changed during the 20th Century and was worth recording. Continue reading The Changing Strand
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were several fast forty-ton sloops sailing a regular packet service to London from the Port of Rye, besides a small fleet of larger vessels trading from the town. Continue reading From a Drawing by Connie Lindqvist
The Hoad Ship Building Yard in Rye was famous for the first class vessels produced there but it was George Smith and his brother Thomas who are remembered by some senior citizens of this town as ‘the boat builders of Rye’ Continue reading The Boat Builders of Rye Part Two
1549- Ordered that none of the inhabitants of Rye, young or old should issue out of the town with drums and flags or otherwise, to enter the woods of any man, without his special licence, to gather or cut down any boughs, on pain of imprisonment for three days and three nights. Continue reading Historical Odds & Ends
The warehouses at The Strand still stand today. They are a reminder of Rye’s maritime past when many ships used to dock in The Strand and unload their cargos of grain, timber, basic slag, coal etc. into these and other warehouses and yards dotted around the area. Continue reading Wharehouses At The Strand
Almost two years now out of Rye – two years trying to get used to living here in West Sussex (it is different to East Sussex!) but two years in the course of which I have, on various occasions, been seen lurking round corners in Rye and two years in which time I have made a start in building a new life far away from the plots, plans and devious scheming that were so much part of my life in dear old Rye!
(If anybody would like to know more about my days in Rye and the good and maybe not so good things I got up to, I would be delighted to tell it all, the way it was…….) Continue reading The Jane Ann of Rye in Arundel 1898
On a cold January morning in 1942 HMS Rye, a Bangor Class Minesweeper commanded by Lieutenant J. A. Pearson, slipped her moorings at a small Scottish port and put to sea on her maiden voyage. Sea trails off the east and west coasts of Scotland proved successful and because of the urgent need for sweepers at that desperate time in the War she was quickly pressed into service. Continue reading HMS Rye
Mrs. Pollington nee’ Jempson of Crowborough has loaned “Rye’s Own” a wonderful photo and cuttings album recording the history of one of Rye’s most famous ship building yards. There are many previously unpublished photographs recording ship building at the yard from the 1880’s to after World War Two, when the yard built ships for the Admiralty that went to war in the Pacific Ocean against the Japanese. This is just a first installment, the album opens with a brief history of the yard written in 1946. Continue reading The Amazing Story of a Rye Shipyard
It seems there have been Marina plans for Rye since time immemorial. This plan for Rye by architect Kenneth Browne was originally printed in “The Architectural Review” dated October 1961. No doubt this idea, which also envisaged rebuilding Continue reading The 1961 Rye Marina Plan
Since Norman times Rye has been an active port with its own fishing fleet and boat building industry. It is all scaled down in these modern times but still fishermen leave Rye on every tide to fish for whatever Brussels allows them to catch. These fishermen are a tough lot, the Rother is not an easy river to navigate Continue reading Port of Rye
