Back Where They Belong

One Year On

Just one year on from the fire which destroyed the Martyn Channon premises in Rye Cattle market the family business is back on the old site and trading in newly constructed buildings. Continue reading Back Where They Belong

Chapel of Rest Gutted

 

Arson Suspected

Two fire appliances rushed up Rye Hill in the early hours of Monday morning (28 January) to fight a fire at Rye Cemetery.

The Chapel of Rest was burning well by the time they arrived and despite their efforts they were unable to save the roof. Extra water was obtained from a hydrant adjacent to the famous Top of the Hill pub & Restaurant, almost a quarter mile away. Rye firemen fought the blaze through the night, saving the walls of the building, which housed lawn mowers and other gardening tools. Continue reading Chapel of Rest Gutted

Rye Cattle Market 1937

This remarkable account of Rye Cattle Market taken from a 1937 Handbook demonstrates how well Rye Cattle Market was doing in the period just before World War Two. This success was carried into the forties and fifties. From 1970 onwards support dwindled. The Market was closed as a result of the Foot and Mouth outbreak at the beginning of the Millennium . Sadly it failed to re-open and is now a car park. Continue reading Rye Cattle Market 1937

Jimper’s Jottings April 2006

Long Live “Rye Royal”

At last its Spring again and with luck I will feel warmer. All this Winter I have felt cold, no matter what I wore or how hot I made my office. Others would gasp at the temperature on entering yet I was still cold. I remember the days not so long ago when Winter meant nothing but inconvenience having to wear rubber boots and something to keep the rain off. But that was before I suffered a stroke and developed diabetes, now my hands are numb all the time and I feel the cold. How old people cope is a miracle and now they are to close the place they could obtain daytime relief. I hope the beurocrats that made this decision get old and suffer alone. Serve them right. I am not one to wish harm on anyone but I truly hope they realise, in their twilight years, what problems they caused for many disabled Rye citizens and their carers in 2006. Continue reading Jimper’s Jottings April 2006

Jimper When the World was Younger

These pictures of Rye’s Own’s longest standing correspondent, Jimper
Sutton, turned up the other day. They are typical of the 1960’s and
illustrate a much slower kind of life lived at that time. Continue reading Jimper When the World was Younger

End of an Era

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 Sheep Pens are Removed
The Sheep Pens are Removed

 

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.

A Sad Day for Rye
A Sad Day for Rye

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).

The Sheep Pens are Removed
The Sheep Pens are Removed

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.

Rye’s Own June 2002

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16th. Annual Autumn Show

Activity at the Cattle Market

If you happened to pass the Market way on Wednesday, 6th October, you would have instantly realised something different was going on down there. Admittedly it was rather foggy and early in the morning, but there was so much activity and hustle and bustle. Continue reading 16th. Annual Autumn Show