News and Gossip Pages
By The Editor
The Price of Land
The piece of land adjacent to the railway between the Mill and Ferry Road, plus another small parcel of ground opposite was sold at action to a developer for £210,000. This was £200,000 over the estimated £5,000 to £10,000 that was the guide price.
The ground between the railway and the Ferry Road School site was sold prior to the auction to an undisclosed buyer at an unknown price.
The developer took no time in clearing the site, chasing out wildlife without even checking what was there. This has upset many local environmentalists. There were badgers living there as well as numerous bird species. On the bright side, the area was overgrown and much rubbish, including a burnt out car were found and cleared away. Perhaps the developer will make an arrangement with the council to leave a strip of the land aside for use as a footpath/cycleway in return for a planning concession.
Refuse Collection in 1966
The terrible problems that the District Council are having with their rubbish collection would be funny if it weren’t so serious. It is causing despair for some older folk who are not up to shifting wheelie bins and sorting out salvageable items.
A document has just come into my hands that demonstrates exactly what has gone wrong. There are hundreds of people working for Rother but they have not learned the lesson that no one can do it as well as you do it yourself. Contractors are having a laugh, they have the councils just where they want them, they charge what they like and still give a shoddy, unacceptable service.
This document I have here on my desk lists every employee used by Rye Borough Council in 1966-67. It is an eye opener. The council owned just one refuse vehicle and had but two men to collect all of Rye’s rubbish and deliver it to the tip on the Camber Fields where it was buried. Sid Polley and Bert Wood walked round the back of every house, collected the dustbin took it to the dust cart and returned the empty bin from whence it came. There is no trace of the tip now, nor the previous tip at Mason Field. They tell me the tipping of rubbish, if executed properly, improves the ground. This seems to be the case when a close look is taken at Mason Field, behind Badger Gate. It is a fine children’s playing field now. So when they tell us that the landfill sites are running out what does that mean? Are there no other fields that could be dug out and filled and the earth replaced on the top of the rubbish as an ongoing thing? Surely there are bigger and better machines capable of doing the job today. Sid Polley and Bert Wood would laugh at the mess or should I say rubbish? that Rother District Council has got itself into.
“Rye’s Own” August 2007
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