The fight goes on. The planning application has been deferred. And Anglia has offered a compromise.
Longs appeared on "Coast to Coast" on Wednesday evening, and in an interview with TVS reporter Amanda Fisher Andy Thomson repeated that Anglia had been an excellent landlord over the past ten years. He saw no possibility of moving the business within Rye - if Anglia won, six staff would lose their jobs and he would either have to start again elsewhere or look for work with another bakery. There was an interview with a customer, and then Peter Salt of Anglia's head office was quoted as saying that they needed the space because of a considerable increase in business, and that Anglia would do what they could to help the Thomsons.
Of course the actual footage filmed on Wednesday morning was much greater than that seen on Wednesday night; Andy Donaldson who has worked at the bakery for six years failed to achieve stardom, as did several customers caught unawares when they came for their bread. (We warmed to one lady who, told by Amanda Fisher that Anglia aght be taking over, asked innocently "Anglia who?".)
The story earned a useful half-page in the trade paper "British Baker" last week.
At Bexhill on Thursday the Planning Committee decided to defer Anglia's application for further reports. As had been expected (GAZETTE no. 108), the Planning Officer had recommended approval of Anglia's application since "purely on planning grounds and in the absence of any adopted policy for protection of retail units in Rye it would be difficult to justify refusal". If the matter went to appeal, his report added, "it would have to be shown that the loss of a retail unit would have a significant effect on the attractiveness of the shopping area as a whole". (We would have thought that this should not present any problem: what is a High Street without a baker's?)
##In the meantime, Kenneth Warren received a letter from the Chief General Manager of Anglia. He was, he told our MP, conscious of the problems arising in the High Street, and the Society was now considering a revised proposal: that the Thomsons should retain the bakery itself and the living accommodation above (and presumably also the only access to the street via the present shop door), but that the Society would take over the shop to add to its office next door. "I believe" he added there will be no difficulty for the bakery in finding another shop close by to sell its products."
We asked Andy Thomson's views on this. He told us that although he and his family appreciated Anglia's proposal (which had, of course, also been made to him direct), he could not see how it would work. Unless they could find a shop nearby - and he couldn't think of one, though maybe Anglia knows something Rye doesn't - it would mean the business having a delivery van simply to transport bread and cakes from one end of the High Street to the other (or to wherever the new shop was). He would very much prefer to stay where he is, and he still hopes that Rother will refuse the application. But at least it means that the local protests have got through to Anglia, and they are trying to find a way out which will be acceptable to both sides.
However, leaving Longs out of it for the moment, the Planning Officer's report opens up a yawning chasm into which the whole High Street as we know it could apparently slip without trace. This question of "an adopted policy for protection of retail units" - haven't we got one? The answer the GAZETTE has had from several unofficial sources is that Rother didn't think we needed one. It sounds rather like the accident black-spot where someone has to be killed before the warning signs go up; is Longs to be the sacrifice this time? Anyway, Rother's planning staff are now investigating the ratio between shops and offices in our shopping areas, and their findings will be incorporated in the Planning Officer's next report, probably to the 13 December meeting.
2.
Mrs. Norah Crick, of Church Square, died in St. Leonards on 23 November, after a year in hospital. Before moving to Rye, Mr. and Mrs. Crick lived in Winchelsea, where she was a most popular and valued member of the community, always willing to help with entertaining and other events for the local National Trust branch, of which her husband was then the Chairman. She leaves her husband, two daughters and two grandchildren. The funeral will take place at St. Mary's on Friday (30th), at 1.45; flowers, or donations to the Chest, Heart and Stroke Association, may be sent to Ellis Bros.
Mrs. Mabel Harman, of Storrington, died recently aged 74. Mrs. Harman was a member of the Pulford family of Rye, and with her five sisters and two brothers was brought up in Ferry Road. She leaves three children.
(WE DO APOLOGISE TO READERS FOR THE POOR QUALITY OF MUCH OF THE PHOTOCOPYING OF THIS WEEK'S ISSUE: IT IS APPARENTLY DUE TO THE DAMP WEATHER AFFECTING THE PAPER, AND WE HOPE TO FIND A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM BY NEXT WEEK.)
Rye Bowls Club held its third Annual Dinner at Ma Beetons on Saturday. 81 members and friends were present, and the company included County Councillor Mrs. Joan Yates, Rother Council's Parks & Gardens Manager Mr. Colin Hudson, and the Mayor and Mayoress, Mr. and Mrs. Roger Breeds - whose great-grandfathers used to meet for a game of bowls on the old green on the Cricket Salts! Mrs. Yates presented the Club with a silver rose bowl as the trophy for the Ladies' Cahmpionship, and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Oliver presented a new flag - the flagstaff, readers may remember, was presented by Mr. Atkinson at the end of the season. Prizes were awarded as follows: Men's Championship, Mr. Reg Weeks; Men's Pairs, Messrs. E. and S. Doyle, father and son; the Brookie Clark Cup, Mr. A. Atkinson; the Shipton Shield, Mr. Weeks; the Ladies' Championship, Mrs. Dorothy Nelhams; and the Ladies' Pairs, Mrs. Evelyn Brown and Mrs. Nelhams.
A reader points out an ingenious plan for going up to London using an Awayday ticket but arriving soon after 10 am. (The first Awayday-eligible train from Rye is the 8.45, due in London at 10.37.)
A day return from Rye to Ashford has no restrictions on travel times, and costs £2. With one of these, you leave Rye by the 8.01. At Ashford, you buy an Awayday to London for £6.20, have a cup of coffee and wait for the 8.57 (Ashford's first Awayday-eligible train) which gets you up to Charing Cross at 10.07. Total cost, £8.20, as against £14.70 for the full return fare from Rye. (If you are not in a hurry, of course, a normal £7.60 Awayday from Rye using the 8.45 is even better.)
A sub-committee of the Chamber of Trade has studied the zupermarket plans, and in general finds them quite satisfactory, with the size appropriate to the town. But members are far from Pleased about the parking arrangements.
They quote the present capacity of the Goods Yard car park as being 25 coaches plus 200 cars. The plans show 84 parking spaces on the Ferry Road side of Station Approach, plus room for 64 cars and 20 coaches in the new park between the railway and the market; Rother's new Mill Lane car park will provide some 50 more spaces.
Total, 198 cars plus 20 coaches. Moreover, a further 20/30 spaces vanish in what is now the approach to the Market, so overall the town would lose five coach space and perhaps 25 car spaces. But, the Chamber calculates, the supermarket would be expected to attract sufficient extra business to the town to require for its own use some 80 spaces over and above present needs. If the plans are to go through, the Chamber reckons that a further 100 car spaces must be found from somewhere just to maintain the status quo: The committee's report will go to Rother in January.
There is still the land between the school and the railway. British Rail are said to be considering using some of it for building; perhaps they had better put a car park there instead?
- 3 - THE RYE GAZETTE, 28.11.1984
We regret to report that East Sussex County Council appears to be pulling out, in financial terms, from the sports centre project. After all the talk about the new gym for Thomas Peacocke School which could be upgraded to a dual-purpose sports centre for town use out of school hours - after all the effort spent in persuading Rother that they should contribute a handsome sum towards the cost, together with a grant from the Sports Council - after all that, ESCC now says it can't afford any funding at all, and is offering to contribute just the site "and its goodwill". However, in fairness, it would be helping with running costs by maintaining the centre during school hours, and also allowing the use of certain school sports facilities out of hours.
The basic gym was just part of a package of work promised for the school which had already been put back once and had finally worked its way up again to the top of the list. A great deal of money, over Elm, was involved; but the school has had hardly anything spent on it lately by way of capital improvement, and everyone was looking forward to the start of the work. It has now been postponed, says the Deputy County Education Officer Dr. Colin Smith, "indefinitely".
Dr. Smith now talks about "a joint scheme" in which all the money is provided by a triumvirate consisting of Rother, the Sports Council and Rye Town Council, together with voluntary funds raised locally. (We don't know what they are expecting the Town Council to contribute, but it isn't going to go far towards the quarter-of-a-million pounds or so needed for a modern sports centre - £75 a year if they're lucky, would be our guess!) David Powell, Rother's Chief Executive, has told the Headmaster that Rother would still be interested in putting up a sports centre on the County Council's school site. He foresees some money coming from Rural Development Area funding as well as from the Sports Council. (But talk about an expensive swimming-pool for Bexhill still splashes away as background noise to any discussion on capital expenditure by Rother.)
However, County Councillor Mrs. Joan Yates tells us that she is going to London next week to represent ESCC at a meeting at the Development Commission's offices,vto discuss Rural Development Area possibilities. She will definitely be lobbying for a grant for the sports centre, which is, she tells us, her number one project at the moment.
We are airing all this now because on 15 December the PTA have arranged a coffee morning and exhibition at Upper School when plans will be on view and the proposed site pegged out (weather permitting!). They hope to have a model of a similar atre, and slides to show just what a sports centre would be. It is probably unduly pessimistic to suggest that perhaps "what a sports centre would have been" might by then be the correct tense; but if you do want one, rally round, go along and tell them so.
A report to Rother's General Purposes Committee from the Chief Technical and Environmental Services Officer goes into considerable detail about action which his Department has taken after a complaint from a householder. The matter arose out of an application for a Public Entertainment Licence from a restaurant in his area, and the complaint was of noise nuisance from performers and audience, inside and outside the restaurant, sometimes until 2 am in the summer.
The matter came to Court, and an agreement was reached, with a licence whose times will be strictly monitored - and "the original complainant has been informed of the 24 hour availability of Senior Environmental Health Officers with regard to emergency standby".
We are reporting this for the benefit of other residents who find themselves with a noisy establishment next door and don't know what to do about it. Clearly, the answer is to contact Rother: the Technical and Environmental Services Department is based at The Watch Oak, Battle (04246 3371).
4.
A green pottery plaque went up last week outside the Black Boy tea-room in the High Street recording that "Radclyffe Hall, 1880-1943, novelist, lived here". With all due respect to Cynthia Reavell of Martello, whose entry in a competition run by the feminist publishers Virago led to the plaque's appearance, Ms Hall was not universally appreciated either as a writer or as a person, and the little Rye has heard of her lately (a book - GAZETTE no. 94 - and a lecture) has not done all that much to help. In view of the town's extensive literary associations, we do rather hope that this is not the start of a plague of plaques, with one on every house which - however briefly - sheltered anyone who wrote a handful of largely forgotten novels!
Talking about plaques, we only recently noticed the granite slab which lies on the outer edge of the small lookout halfway along Hilder's Cliff. For the record, it reads: "AD 1914. Erected by public subscription to the memory of John Symonds Vidler, in grateful recognition of his many generous and unselfish services to his >native town." The inscriptmon was well deserved. John Symonds Vidler, whose >grandfather John Vidler founded the shipping business which became Vidler & Sons Ltd., and who subsequently managed the firm himself, was a member of the Town Council for over 20 years, Mayor of Rye in 1883, 1884 and again in 1892, a JP for the borough and the county, chairman of the Harbour Commissioners and a Major in the 1st Cinque Ports Rifle Volunteers, among his other activities. He was one the nine men whose meeting at the George Hotel in 1893 led to the founding of the Golf Club, and it is his grandson Denis Vidler whose history of the Club we so much enjoyed recently (GAZETTE no. 105).
At the planning meeting last Thursday, Rother did deal with other Rye matters as well as Longs/Anglia (see front page). Two proposals for industrial development along the Rye Harbour Roali, from LP Holdings and from Hatleys, were approved subject to Section 52 agreements. A Mection 52 agreement in this context - cropping up frequently in connection with harbour Road developments - is in effect a commitment on the part of the developer to contribute a specific sum towards highway improve¬ments, particularly in this case the junction with Winchelsea Road.
In Rye itself, permission was granted for two signs for the Wish Ward entrance to 54 The Mint, and for change of use from shop to office for 15-17 Cinque Ports Street (Hamilton Galleries). The Seawitch Marine application for moorings, etc., off Rye Harbour Road was deferred for comments from the SWA, and the canopy blind for Casa Conti was also deferred for discussion about the design. Rother's car park near the Mill was approved, subject to no objection from the Historic Build's and Monuments Commission.
We were a bit puzzled by the apparent interest of this august body in several Rye applications this month. But this is merely a new regulation; the Commission (the same people who dug out Camber Castle) now have to be given 28 days' notice of any planning application affecting a Conservation Area.
Rother's Housing Department has issued statistics for its waiting list as at thecbeginning of this month. In Rye, 7 families are waiting for one-bedroom dwellings, 34 for those with two bedrooms, 4 for three bedrooms, 8 for four bedrooms; 9 single elderly people and 7 elderly couples are waiting for "aged persons" accommodation.
This adds up to 69 in all; oddly, the equivalent figure for Battle is only 28. For Bexhill, it is 364, and 196 of those are single elderly people. The figures are rather intriguing elsewhere, too; Crowhurst has no waiting list at all, and at Northiam there are 15 people waiting, of whom all but one want "aged persons" accommodation (sorry about this horrible phrase - it may not be quite the same thingc>as "sheltered housing"). Leaving out this latter class, the type most in demand is the two-bedroomed house/flat, of which Bother would need a further 192 tocsatisfy all its claimants!
The PTA's Fashion Extravaganza was a classic example of that old theatrical clichec "It'll be all right on the night". It was all right, very much so; but no-one thought it would be! Vastly enjoyed by a large audience, it raised £310 for PTA funds as well as being excellent public relations for the local businesses which took part.
As we had forecast, it was not a traditional fashion show. None of the clothes were described in detail, no-one put out a hand to finger the material (or the models!) Music and lights and dancing provided a showground for the garments. Except for a few tinies, the children were all Thomas Peacocke pupils, and most of the male models were Thomas Peacocke staff members, which made for considerable hilarity among the audience. "It's the only fashion show I've ever seen" said our neighbour, "where the men steal the applause!" Compere Nick Hirst, used to >BBC work, took it all in his stride. A cheerful group of youngsters gave a display of - break-dancing, was it? And later on a dedicated group of James Kimber's staff gave a demonstration of hairdressing, on stage.
The evening started with children going off to school, and progressed via casual, sporting and formal occasions to bed-time and then, perhaps illogically, to the traditional wedding scene complete with confetti. The bride, Penny Ramsey, /^ armed all hearts wearing the crinoline dress (with 11 petticoats underneath and ,.free layers to the skirt itself) in which she had been married at St. Mary's in May; she designed and made it herself, and it was the start of her business "Fairy Tales" about which we wrote in C-ZiETTE no. 101.
The PTA committee are extremely grateful to Penny; to Rosemary Griffiths of Rose-Anne, who dressed "her" ladies single-handed - and what a lovely white evening dress she showed, along with more workaday outfits; to the staff of Bennetts, who made the younger TPS staff members look so disconcertingly respectable; to the two girls from Debenhams' Just In department, and to Mr. and Mrs. Piper of Quarter Bell, who between them catered for an apparently endless stream of junior models. (Somehow, alas, the clothes produced by Seacruisers got mislaid and were not shown, much to the regret of the organisers.)
Quite apart from their on-stage display, the staff of James Kimber spent most of Friday doing the hair of some 32 models (yes, the men too) and making up their faces (no,probably not the men too); the children, apparently spent every spare moment peeking at themselves in the mirror to see if they really still looked like that, since many of them had never had their hair done in a shop before - let alone their faces! Malcolm Harris was in charge of the sound, and Andrew Heather (with two helpers) of the lighting; two more stage-crew members were represented by a waving hand from one side of the curtain when the thanks were being said. As well as the PTA committee members, there were a lot of extra helpers backstage, including those who got down on their knees and scrubbed the changing-room floors to clean off the day's sports-field mud. Rowena Varley and Hilary McDonald and the other committee members had all put a great deal of work into the event, but the real star was Julia Thomas, assistant housemistress at Leasam, whose idea it had been and who had nursed it along through thick and thin (sometimes very thin) to this successful fruition. Julia was presented with a bouquet by Tracy Cronshaw of The Mint, and well she deserved it.
As for the audience - well, it was the sort of night when the rain comes not so much down as sideways, and the Upper School hall juddered in the gale; the sort of night when people normally choose to stay at home. Nonetheless, the 250 tickets printed ran out while there was still queueing at the door. It was certainly something special in the way of an evening out, and will not be forgotten in a hurry.
* The weather which roared outside Upper School hall on Friday night roared elsewhere too, particularly in Udimore where they were without electricity for 19 hours; but apart from fallen trees there was, the police say, no serious damage and Camber and Winchelsea Beach were no wetter than the rest of us at the weekend.
• Once more the Chamber of Trade will be lighting up the night sky for Christmas with its strings of coloured bulbs across the High Street - and traders are being asked to contribute £7 per business in the lit area and £3 in other parts of the town, to this and other Christmas attractions. Any members of the public who would like to add their mites to this will be warmly welcomed by Mrs. Amy Breeds at 4 St. Margaret's Terrace, Rye; Mrs. Breeds is the Chamber's secretary. Father Christmas makes his appearance in the town in state on Saturday week. He will arrive at the railway station at 4, an hour earlier than last year, and in order that his fans can see him he will, this time, be boat-borne on a trailer through the streets, led by the Rye Majorettes. He will turn on the illuminations at the George Hotel, and then go up to the Town Hall to switch on the Christmas tree lights there, when there will be carol singing with the St. Mary's choir on the Town Hall steps. And balloons come into it somewhere, too.
There will be late shopping in the town on two evenings the following week - Thursday, 13th and Friday, 14th, until 8 pm.
• Many people will already have noticed that Lloyds Bank is in the process of installing an outdoor Cashpoint on the West Street frontage of its High Street branch. It is no good joyfully feeding your card in just yet, as the complicated back-up takes time to instal indoors, but Lloyds manager Brian Tuck hopes that the machiL will be "on line" in time for Christmas.
• Kenneth and Susan Simmons, of The Mint, are very pleased with not just one but three accolades awarded to Simmons Restaurant recently. Their rating of 13 out of 20 in the Good Food Guide's latest edition puts them among the top 90 restaurants in Britain. Egon Ronay's Guide, in which they are the only Rye restaurant, awards them symbols for luxury and for friendly service. And a new guide, Mood Food, which is primarily concerned with London eating-out, includes Simmons as the only Sussex restaurant among just 18 in its "for when you want to get out of London" section. Mood Food, produced by the restaurant critic of The Times and a writer from Time Out, has the sensible idea of classifying restaurants according to mood (are you feeling rich? or poor? are you feeding the family? or eating late?), and its "country" section has a nice alluring piece about Rye generally.
• Many readers will be sorry to hear that a long-established Rye business is closing at the end of the year. "Retirement Sale" notices in the window of Ellwoods, the television and radio shop in Market Road, mean that Mr. and Mrs. Ellwood are retiring from business, and when the shop reopens under a new owner it will be selling something quite different. However, customers with sets under guarantee have no need to worry; Laurie Suker will be offering servicing from his home in Pottingfield Road in 1985 to old and new customers alike - though whether he will have room to hang on to the box of obsolete valves which stands inside the shop door is doubtful, so if you are a vintage radio collector now is your chance, later may be too late!
Ellwoods started in life as Healeys, in the next-door piemises now occupied by the cleaners, soon after Maurice Healey was demobbed. Mr. Ellwood joined the staff in 1948 - he is a New Zealander by birth who came to Brenzett with the Royal Ni Air Force, met his wife here, and came back after the war to settle for good. When, in 1964, Mr. Healey bought Frank Golden's drapery business, Mr. Ellwood took over the television business, and now, twenty years later, he is retiring. But both Mr. and Mrs. Ellwood are extremely active in the life of the town in many ways, and they are certainly not going to be short of something to do for the ccming years.
• Humble apologies to anyone who went along to a Post Office counter clasping £1.30 and expecting it to buy them 20 13p stamps (back page, last week). The Post Office is being generous, but not that generous! The price of the special-offer stamp books is C2.30, saving 30p on the regular price of £2.60; but they are still a very good buy, and in fact Rye Post Office has now sold out and is not sure whether any more are on the way.
7.
• Condolences to Mr. and Mrs. Philip Scriven of Rye Harbour, whose home in Tram Road was extensively damaged by fire last Wednesday evening - clothes left drying in front of a fire are under suspicion as the cause. The house is one of a terrace, and an eye-witness tells us that Rye Fire Brigade deserve every compliment for their efforts, which undoubtedly saved the rest of the row. Fireman David Giles was hit in the face by a falling tile and has several broken teeth as a result.
• We are told that a bomb was found near the Golf Course last week! Not an IRA one, however - this was a WW2 relic unearthed by beachworks excavations and blown up by a bomb disposal squad - paying their second visit, it seems, in recent weeks.
• The sponsored bike ride which Andrew Heather and Simon de Ste Croix took at half- term has already produced £320 in sponsorship money, with more expected. Half goes to Baptist Home Missions, and half to the Lifeboat House Appeal; there will be a formal presentation in the New Year.
• The Christmas Show at the Easton Rooms is described as "a cornucopia of delights" which we could not better as an assessment of this most attractive exhibition, put together with Christmas presents for young and old in mind. Many of the gallery's regular exhibitors have contributed work, with plenty of toys and jewellery as well other crafts and, of course, pictures. The show runs until New Year's Eve, so there is an opportunity to buy yourself the Christmas present weren't given!
• Mrs. Doreen Wordley of Winchelsea Road was taken to RESH for a check-up on Friday after she was involved in an accident with a Fiat driven by a Pett man. Mrs. Wordley was walking along near the Laundry at the time.
• A report from the Treasurer of Rother Council says some very nice things about the Community Centre, Association members will be pleased to know. He refers to the long and sustained effort by the Association which has achieved the attractive facility that now exists (we quote). He had received an application for a one- third grant towards the cost of installing the toilet for the disabled, which is not within the scope of a Rural Development Area grant, and he therefore recommends to the General Purposes Committee that it should approve a grant of £1000 to the Community Centre.
• We note with regret the disappearance in favour of decorator's whitewash of the Louis Turpin racing scenes from the bookmaker's window at Banister's Corner. We record their loss for the benefit of future art historians; Louis' paintings do not normally receive such unceremonious treatment!
• Four Rye Sea Cadets under their CO Lt. Paul Whiteman had an exciting time at sea on IMS Illustrious last week; they joined her at Rosyth and sailed with her right round to Portsmouth, waving to Rye from a long way out to sea as they went past.
• Postscript to Bonfire Night: a reader wonders whether the reduced collection was due to the shorter route, and whether South Undercliff and Military Road residents would have boosted it if the procession had passed their houses? We offer the point for the consideration of the Bonfire Boys. (Of course last year's procession also took the shorter route, and the collection was twice as much - perhaps Christopher Casenove's personal magnetism accounted for that?)
• British Rail's November offer of £2 journeys for Senior Citizen Railcard holders is about to come to an end. Would readers who are proud of what they achieved in the course of a month's travelling care to tell us of their exploits? We will print the stories anonymously if correspondents prefer; but it would be interesting to record what enterprising over-sixties did. What, we wonder, was the furthest anyone went on an Awayday (probably on a Saturday with its earlier starting-time)?
• Thomas Peacocke School PTA are writing to Rother about the supermarket plans; they are worried about the lack of provision for the 600 or so pupils who wait for buses at 4 (or, indeed, emerge from them at 9), and also about the 400 Lower School chil¬dren who would find themselves entangled in a through road just over the crossing. The latter point, of course, also applies to Freda Gardham children who live in Udimore Road, Ferry Road or the Tilling Green Estate.
Muscular Dystrophy coffee morning, Red Cross, 10
National Trust AGM, with slides of National Trust properties taken and shown by Alma Fabes, CC, 7.30
Rye Dance Centre's "Showbiz", Upper School (The Grove), 7.30 - also Saturday; tickets from North Kent Building Society
Lions' Charity Shop, CC, 10 to 5
Rye Festival coffee morning, 30 Mermaid Street, 10
St. John Nursing Cadets Christmas coffee morning, HQ, 10.30 (GAZETTE no. 108)
Monday Club, Clinic, 2
Rye Players play-reading, 5 Bridge Place, 8 (see below)
hearing Circle coffee morning, Red Cross, 10.30 (see below)
FRAG talk, "The Other Side of the Picture" (John Doyle), TH, 8
NSPCC Centenary Christmas coffee morning, George Hotel, 10
• We hear that the NSPCC's coffee morning at Winchelsea last week achieved the astonishing sum of £812, and we do hope that Rye people will make a real effort to see if the town can top this on the 5th!
• Rye Players, at present lacking a producer, are having a playreading on Monday just for fun. The play chosen is a one-act comedy called "The Dear Departed" and anyone would would like to take part would be very welcome, says Joan Parkes.
• In the course of the Hearing Circle coffee morning on Tuesday (4th), the draw will be made for the Red Cross County Lottery, for a (weekly) first prize of £100 and other prizes of £25 and £5. A lucky Wednesday Club member, says Hilary Bolton, won first prize a few weeks ago; will Rye be lucky again next week?
• The new bottle-banks have now appeared, in the approved colours: white for clear glass, green for coloured. And, says a plaintive little notice, they do want jars as well as bottles.
• Congratulations to Tony and Cynthia Reavell, whose Benson paperback was among "the ten most interesting paperbacks published this week" in The Times recently. (It does seem hard that no review has yet appeared in the Sussex Express.)
• The Greyfriars Christmas sale is at the home in Winchelsea on Saturday afternoon from 2 to 4.30; Father Christmas will be in attendance.
• There will be no Social Services lunch in December; the January meeting will have a speaker on the Rural Development Area as it affects community developmenc.
• Congratulations to Rye Scouts and Cubs, whose Christmas Fair raised E322 at the Scout Hut on Saturday morning.
• Planning: just one, an additional bedroom to replace a garage in The Grove.
• Crime: a Ford Escort P-registration van taken from Market Road on Bonfire Night was found later abandoned in Westfield. Not found so far is a Yamaha outboard 2-stroke engine stolen from Sea Cruisers on 20 November.
• From Saturday, Father Christmas will be at Shades coffee bar in the High Street at times convenient for his younger admirers; after expenses, Mr. Johnson tells us, the proceeds of his stay in Rye will be divided between the Eye Laser Appeal and the NSPCC.
• Do not miss the Bazaar in the Town Hall on Saturday week (8th), when the Friends of Hill House Hospital offer mince-pies with the coffee from 10, plus all the usual stalls.
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office, and published by Mrs. Mary Owen, 2 Cyprus Place, Rye (Rye 222303). News items for inclusion are always welcome - deadline Monday afternoon, Tuesday 9 am for emergencies. The GAZETTE costs 25p weekly and is delivered to subscribers; some spare copies are available from Squirrels, 9-13 Cinque Ports Street. (Copyright Mary Owen 1984)