The new Quay at the Fishmarket in Rye has been in use now for 10 Years. It has proved to be a safe and workable arrangement that transformed the old fishing boat base from the most dangerous berth in the UK to the second safest fishing boat tie up in the country.
It was due to the effort, determination and tenacity of one man that this project Continue reading The Building of Simmons Quay
This year, despite the dubious weather forecast, the sun shone on a record crowd at the Annual Rye Raft Race and Fete organised by Rye and District Lions Club. This was the 34th Race organised by the Lions who usually expect some 5,000 members of the public to attend. However, this year the numbers were so great that they found it impossible to estimate how many turned up for the event, but many, many more than ever before. The queues for both the barbecue and the Continue reading Rye Raft Race 2012
The Tale of Smeaton’s Harbour is an everyday story of country gentry and their shenanigans. It is set in the town of Rye between May 1724 and October 1787…and it is a true story. The chronicler of these events is John Meryon, writing in Continue reading Smeaton Again
While the rivers around Rye, the Rother, Brede and Tillingham, were, sufficiently wide and deep and the ordinary trading vessels small enough to navigate them to their destination without the necessity of any transhipment, there was no need of such a craft. Several factors, however, combined to change the situation in a drastic fashion. Continue reading The Marsh Barges
When you hear of the loss of any ship you immediately think of a disaster, but, of course, there are more ships that run a normal sort of time and wear out and rust or rot whilst laid up.
“The fishing smack Pert” was laid up and left on the pulsing opposite where I was born and brought up. Continue reading The Loss of Sailing Fishing Smack “Pert”
By Jimper Sutton
I was only sixteen but bent on making my own history. My mate Chris had seen a documentary on the telly the night before of a couple that had travelled down the Amazon in a life raft. Continue reading Royal Military Canal by Canoe
Photographs IAIN POCOCK Report Conrad Freezer
After last year’s wet day, the sun came out for Rye & District Lions Club Raft Race & Fete, with an estimated crowd of 4-5,000 spectators cheering on a record entry of sixteen rafts. Although it is early days, the Lions estimate that the event raised around £8,000, all of which will go to help charities, local, national and international over the next year. Continue reading Rye Raft Race
by Peter Etherden
This is a cautionary tale and I have cut corners in the telling. Rye’s trawler fleet has been decimated by the European Union over the past few decades and although a new Fishing Quay is finally under construction the part played by the Rye Fishmarket Project in the whole story has been written out of this shortened account which focuses on our failure to dredge Rye’s Strand Quay…something which has been done every few years since time immemorial. Continue reading Dredging Strand Quay
Photographs from the collection of E.G. Pollington (nee Jempson)
“A Thirteenth Century traveller from inland, making his way through the gloom of the Sussex forests, might well have paused on the outskirts of Rye to listen to a strange sound, a rhythmic hammering, half-metallic, half wooden in its timbre, which floated out hour after hour on the southerly breeze. Continue reading Boat Builders of Rye Part 3
