By the time this issue gets to the newsagents, Easter will have come and gone. This year seems to be flying past. So much is going on in the World. Continue reading Editorial
Tag: Cinque Ports Fleet
What Has Changed Since August 2005?
By Jim Hollands
Looking Back
(Written in 2012)
Looking back seven years to the August 2005 issue of “Rye’s Own” I came across the following piece I wrote at that time which contained predictions of what could happen to Rye during the following eight years. I was interested to know how accurate I had been with just one year of the eight left to run. Continue reading What Has Changed Since August 2005?
Traditional Business Returns to Rye
By Jim Hollands
Rye and Shipping go together like coffee and cream. Since the days before recorded history Rye has been associated with shipbuilding and fishing. Continue reading Traditional Business Returns to Rye
The Poppy fields of Rye
The Field of Battle
We have all heard of Flanders Fields, where poppies bloomed across the battlefields and were said by soldiers of that terrible war to represent the blood of the thousands that fell there, but what of the poppy fields of Rye? Continue reading The Poppy fields of Rye
Open Letter from Rye
An Open Letter sent By “Rye’s Own” on behalf of the People of Rye to the Leaders of all Parties in March 2006
Please put politics aside, join together and save the Ancient Town of Rye from being decimated by the two controlling outside bodies. For 900 years this proud member of the Cinque Ports Confederation governed its own affairs very satisfactorily but in 1974 the Local Government Re-organization Act meant that Rye was left with a virtually powerless Town Council. A new body, Rother District Council, took most of Rye’s powers and assets to iBexhill. Since that time Rye has been in decline, suffering under a regime that is governed by Bexhill members of the District Council who hold a virtual majority of the 38 seats compared to Rye’s two. Democracy was taken away at a stroke! Continue reading Open Letter from Rye
The Amazing Story of a Rye Shipyard
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 There are many previously unpublished photographs recording ship building at the yard from the 1880’s to after World War Two, when the yard built ships for the Admiralty that went to war in the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
Piracy and the Cinque Ports
By Rya
“From the remote past down to the middle of the fourteenth century.” writes Neville Williams. “the line dividing legitimate trade from piracy was blurred, for one and the same individual followed what would later become four different professions—fisherman, trader. pirate and naval officer.” As there were no Continue reading Piracy and the Cinque Ports
The Battle of Rye Bay
The English fleet lay at anchor in the lagoon that stretched from the foot of the hill on which New Winchelsea is built to the cliffs of Rye. The forty or so Cinque Ports built ships were a hive of activity, preparations for battle were well under way. Word had come that a great force of Spanish ships were passing along the Kent coast having come from Sluys in Belgium where they had loaded their ships with many men and materials with which to effect raids on England. Continue reading The Battle of Rye Bay