A major burglary took place at Bennetts in the High Street between tea-time on Sunday and 8.50 on Monday morning, when a large quantity of good-quality men's clothing was stolen from the shop. Well-known makes included Jaeger, Aquascutum, Grenfell, Crossfell, Levi and Lee Cooper. The total retail value of the haul is somewhere over £30,000. The thieves got in and out through an attic window, over the roof of the Golden Fleece next door.
In view of the scale of the burglary, it is clear that a large vehicle must have been used. Police are most anxious to hear from anyone who noticed such a vehicle parked in the High Street or Lion Street area on Sunday evening or at any time during the night - and also, of course, from anyone who saw anything during that time which might possibly relate to the crime. They would like, too, to hear of any high-class men's clothing being offered for sale cheap. They have, of course, already spoken to the neighbours; but if you happened to be in the centre of the town on Sunday night, do please think back - and if you have any information at all call at the police station.
We now have, almost too late so please pass word round quickly, details of the Neighbourhood Watch meeting tonight (Wednesday) at 7.30 at the Community Centre. It is aimed primarily at the community co-ordinators, with the intention that they can pass on the information to the householders in their "patches"; but anyone interested in not being burgled - which, goodness knows, must mean everyone: - will be very welcome. Crime Prevention Officer from Hastings PC John Wootton will be showing video films about the measures that householders can take to make their homes more secure (and including a warning about bogus callers). He will be very pleased to answer questions from the audience, and it should be a fruitful evening - for those who know about it in time to turn up.
A road tanker's automatic brakes saved an electricity sub-station from demolition when the tanker became detached from its tractor unit coming out of Rye Harbour Road at 5.45 am on Friday. No-one was hurt; and after it was all cleared away the only damage was a pock-mark in the pavement and a rather bent wooden fence, which Seeboard staff were already repairing as the giant rescue crane departed. But for six hours on Friday morning the incident occupied a number of police and both the Rye fire engines, because the tanker, tilted sideways across the pavement and blocking one lane of Winchelsea Road, contained chloroform - andfbontaminated" chloroform at that!
The inhabitants of the two houses near the sub-station were evacuated, and the staff of Tollgate Garage were deprived of their heating and warned that they also might have to get out at short notice. The waiting firemen were reasonably snug inside their machines, but not the police, taking turns on point duty to direct the traffic round the obstruction on the junction - there was an agonisingly cold wind blowing from the Marsh... The arrival of a motorised St. Bernard from the police station with an urn and hot chocolate in the back was much appreciated.
The road was completely closed for 30 minutes while the crane hauled the tanker - from which nothing had leaked at all - back onto its tractor unit, and the Macclesfield-based outfit returned to Solvent Services for a check-up. We are thankful to report that it turned out to be another of those accidents which could have been infinitely worse: apart from the implications of the tanker contents, apart from what would have happened to anyone on the pavement, it would not have been the best of mornings to have the electricity cut off!
2.
Mrs. Marjorie Gilbert, of Watchbell Street, died on 16 February. The funeral is at St. Anthony's on Thursday (21st) at 2.30, followed by burial in Rye Cemetery. We hope to have a fuller obituary next week.
Miss Alice Boreham, of Badger Gate, died in Rye Hospital on 16 February. Miss Boreham, who was a great-great-aunt and would have been 90 in April, had lived at Badger Gate for 16 years. The funeral is at Hastings Crematorium on Friday (22nd) at 3.30.
Mrs. Phyllis Carruthers, of Udimore Road, died on 17 February. The funeral takes place at St. Mary's on Monday, 25th, followed by cremation at Hastings. Mrs. Carruthers and her late husband George were the immensely popular landlords of the Union Inn in East Street in the 1950s and early 1960s, and she will be much missed by her friends in the town.
Plans are well advanced, Carolyne Simpson tells us, for the September Festival. Among the highlights will be the London Mozart Players conducted by Jane Glover; Chris Barber's Jazz and Blues Band; a programme with Jill Bennett and Edward Hardwicke called "Advice...and how not to take it", and Sheila Steafel in her one-woman show.
Mrs. Simpson also tells us that this will be her last year as Festival organiser. She joined the Festival committee as treasurer in 1973 and has been involved every year except 1976; she will also have organised the 1984 and 1985 Festivals. So the committee will need a new Organiser for the 1986 Festival. Mrs. Simpson (30 Mermaid Street - Rye 222709) would be delighted to hear from anyone interested in the (voluntary) job; it would, she says, clearly be an advantage for them to join the Festival committee as soon as possible so as to see what is involved.
It isn't as if the bus drivers had had things particularly easy just lately anyway. But what goes on the Station Approach when the Thomas Peacocke children are waiting for their transport must be enough to drive anyone distracted at the end of a day's work. We watched on Wednesday.
There were buses trying to come in, buses trying to come out, private cars aiming at the railway station (and an L-driver parked on the Post Office corner) - and endless children, some of them quite big, fooling about in the middle of the road as if it were the school playground. When a moving bus was about a foot away, they might condescend to shift themselves - but slowly.
These children surely owe their lives to the patience and restraint of our bus drivers, who must be sorely tempted to run over an occasional half-dozen "pour encourager les autres"; as it is, they nobly edge round without even a blast of their horns. The school is not responsible for the children once they have lef school premises; the bus company is not responsible foi them until they board the buses; these particular children were quite old enough to be responsible for themselves, and we only wish their parents could see what goes on.
The PTA, extremely worried about the situation, is hoping that the supermarket layout will lead to some form of improvement; we would think that a stout stock-proof fence is needed! If there is a tragedy, it will not be the fault of the bus driver.
The exhibition "New and Old Faces" with which the Easton Rooms reopened after its brief winter break is a mixed show of paintings, prints and sculpture - the latter including a full-sized dog in painted aluminium! There was work from old friends, and from several artists new (we think) to the gallery; but on a chilly Saturday morning the picture which remains in the mind is Louis Turpin's lovely summery garden, a memory of Sissinghurst - one could almost feel the sun, and hear the bees!
3 THE RYE GAZETTE, 20.2.1985
Rye Town Council's Bequests Committee held a most successful party at the Community Centre on Saturday. 135 of the town's older residents sat down to a mea of turkey, ham, salad and potatoes, followed by gateaux and unlimited cups of tea. They were entertained by variety from Rye Players and a very funny sketch from Rye WI's new drama group, and each guest went home with a box of After Eights as a personal gift from the Mayor.
The party meant a lot of hard work for Bequest Committee members and friends, some of the other councillors and the Town Clerk - preparations went on all day. But Bequests Committee chairman Mrs. Monica Oliver told us oa Monday that it had been a lovely afternoon and she had already had lots of letters from guests to say how much they had enjoyed themselves.
Rye Harbour Sailing Club is holding a social evening at the Harbour club-house on Saturday (23rd) at 8, with something rather special by way of entertainment. The Club's Don Cooke Memorial Trust last summer sponsored Steven Whiting (now of Camber, then of Winchelsea Road) on a sail-training cruise in the "Soren Larsen" - a cruise geared to the needs of disabled sailors - which he very muchvenjoyed (GAZETTE no. 101). Now Steven is coming to the Club to say thank-you by showing slides of the cruise; and he will be accompanied by his Headmaster from Chailey Heritage and another member of the staff, so the Club hopes for a talk about the work of the school as well.
John Royle tells us that the Club would welcome as visitors on this occasion >anyone interested to hear either about the cruise or about the school. The Memorial Trust committee will soon be looking for a candidate for its 1985 award; members would like the place to go to someone from the area, not neces¬sarily disabled but who would benefit from the experience and would not be able to go without the Club's help. Possible candidates for this place might like to go along on the 23rd and have a general chat with the committee members? Or, failing this, ring Gordon Moorey on Hastings 812446 if you would like details.
The Eade family of Mill Road were much missed when they moved to Cranbrook some time ago, and it was a pleasure to meet Sally in the High Street in December; we asked her to let us know how her musical career was going, and we are now glad to report, for the benefit of her many friends in the area, that it is clearly going very well.
Sally is now in the second year of her 4-year Performer's course in singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama based in the Barbican. As well as singing, she studies the piano, and French, German, Italian and phonetics - all essential for a singer - plus classes in mime and in "speech and voice", a variant of elocution. As well as all this there is a choir, so she often has to get to >college by 8 am to allow time to practise!
When Sally was still in her first year, she was accepted for the chorus of the opera department's production of Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", with a Glyndebourne producer - a valuable experience. In the summer she toured California with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, giving over twelve concerts and singing at Disneyland and on American television.
By September Sally was being offered solos, as mezzo-soprano in Bach's B Minor Mass with the Deo Gratias Choir singing at Bishops Stortford and Cambridge, and as alto just before Christmas in the Messiah at St. Paul's School in South London. But she hopes to enter the field of operetta when she leaves college, and has had the opportunity to sing "songs from the shows" locally, at Harvest Suppers, Rotary
Club lunches, and a concert in Cranbrook last week. We look forward to reporing further on her career.
4.
• The "public meeting" mentioned on Radio Sussex as being held on Monday to consider the Town Council's parking proposals was in fact just the Town Council special meeting already referred to in the GAZETTE; all Town Council meetings are held in public. The Mayor tells us that it was decided to make enquiries from other towns which had tried similar restrictions, to see what effect they had had on traffic and on trade. Further discussion of the sub-committee report has been shelved until this information has been received and considered, which is likely to take some time.
• The application from the owners of Saltcote Place to build two bungalows on land north of the main house has been refused by Rother. The Planning Officer's recommendation to his committee had been that permission should be granted subject to conditions about trees, etc., plus a Section 52 agreement that the stable block would not be sold separately from the house. However, this recommendation was rejected, and permission was refused on four grounds: that the proposal was contrary to the Structure Plan for the area; that it was out of character with the area and detrimental to existing dwellings; that it represented undesirable back-land development with inadequate access; and that, in effect, it could set up a precedent for similar applications.
• The current planning list contains an application for change of use for 5/6 Landgate from gift shop to restaurant. But before you say "Oh, not another restaurant!" read on: the applicants are the present proprietors of the Bistro Down Under in the High Street, which has of course been established in the town for a long time. Their High Street lease expires shortly and the owner of the property wants it back, so the intention is merely to move the Bistro into the Landgate - "instead of" rather than "as well as", so to speak.
• Other planning applications in the list include a non-illuminated hanging sign for Serendipity in the High Street; and a pair of garages and one single garage for Ellis Bros on what will be their new builders' yard when the supermarket development gets under way - and we are told by the developers' agent that unless a major hiccup appears this is likely to be in April.
• The Hastings office of Le Fevre Wood & Royle is applying for detailed permission further to the outline permission already granted for the erection of 15 dwellings with garages in Rock Channel. John Underwood suggests that anyone nervous about this development would be reassured if they cared to call at the firm's Rye office and look at the drawings. While on the subject, we asked what was happening
about the blue-roofed industrial units built earlier on the adjoining site, and rumoured to be still unlet? Not strictly true, John Royle told us: one unit is already let, to a double-glazing firm, and the others are only awaiting the arrival of the electricity supply which has been delayed by legal difficulties. Once this is done, within the next few weeks, he expects them to be tenanted soon.
• There is also considerable interest in the Rye Rural Industrial Park in Harbour Road, the Hatleys development where the bomb was dug up recently. Geering Colyer say that the rents are adjusted to the needs of young businesses, starting very low and building up to a normal rent only after several years. Construction work on the site is proceeding rapidly.
• Last summer, when the Customs Office in the High Street was redecorated, the handsome Victorian coat-of-arms over the doorway - a much-photographed feature of the High Street - was removed; it was being repainted, we were told in October, and these things take a long time. They certainly do! It is still not back, and in view of suspicions being voiced in the town that it never would be, we talked to Rye Customs Officer Bill Masell. He assures us that it really is still being repainted, and that he has a receipt for it, though the painter has not yet given >a date for its return. Mr. Masell added that, Conservation Area or not, the Royal Arms would leave the High Street if the Customs Office were to depart. It has been there since before the war, formerly above the ironmongers on the Hilder's Cliff corner; and before that, as Reg Hollands told his Community Centre audience last October, it would have been at the little shop beside the Borough Arms at the foot of Mermaid Street.
5.
Another family tree enquiry this week, from Martyn Haley of 11 Shiphay Avenue, Torquay, Devon - and passed on to the GAZETTE by Sheelagh Fox of Playden Cottage. Mr. Haley seeks information about his Payne ancestors, who include Henry and Sarah Payne who lived in Playden Cottage at the end of the last century. Henry had an older brother Thomas, and at least one daughter, Harriet, who died unmarried in 1907 aged 61; Henry himself died in 1901, aged 83. There is a photograph of >Henry and Sarah, looking very upright, taken in the Playden Cottage garden in about 1890. Mr. and Mrs. Haley are already in touch with Alan Dickinson; but if anyone else can help in their researches, they would be very grateful for a letter.
"The Captain's Table" restaurant at the Saltings Hotel is at present closed while it undergoes a transformation. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins are keen to carry over into the 1930s extension something of the atmosphere of the original house, built for Kate Stonham in 1901 when she moved her expanding Collegiate School from its old quarters on Conduit Hill.
Former Collegiate pupils will be interested to know that when the restaurant reopens, its name - "The Old School Carvery" - will preserve the school's connection with the building. To emphasise this, Ann Jenkins would very much like to have on the wall a display of photographs illustrating the whole history of the school, from its beginnings until it closed in the early 1970s. But since the decor will echo the early days, she is particularly anxious to hear from anyone who would be kind enough to lend her, for copying, pictures dating back before.
If you can help Mrs. Jenkins with any Collegiate School pictures, she would be very pleased to hear from you, either by phone (Rye 223838) or in person; and we feel sure that she would willingly call on anyone who is unable to get about but has something to show her. All pictures will, of course, be treated with great care and returned after copying.
A reader rang the Editor last week to say how sad it was that no-one in Rye was interested in "the emergency resuscitation course". Did she mean the St. John first-aid lectures, we asked? No, this was different: a one-off talk/demonstration on 21 February at the Clinic, organised by something called the Health Education Unit at Hastings as one of a series of such sessions in the area. She had seen a mention ages ago in the News and had applied for the Rye course, only to be told on Thursday that it had been cancelled for lack of support.
A bit huffy about this, because it seemed a slur on a town more likely to have been ill-informed than uninterested, we made enquiries. The Unit said they had put it in Fixtures; and so they had - just one line, with no back-up. No posters. (And no-one told the GAZETTE.) So most people knew nothing about it, and of course it was cancelled. The Community Health Council (quite different from the Unit) tells us that these are excellent lectures and heavily over-subscribed elsewhere - so we have obviously missed out on something good. The St. John Ambulance Brigade also knew nothing about the course, but Alan Webb says the Division is always willing to arrange something of this kind for an organisatio >which wants it. So if any local group would like to set up such a course, the GAZETTE will be delighted to publicise it - this is obviously a subject on which everyone could usefully be well-informed.
Having been privileged, last week, to "leak" the good news about the evening trains to Rye from Ashford, we now have a mass of paper from BR at Waterloo giving details of changes all over the Region. If anyone wants to check on a particular route, do ask. The new timetable will begin on 13 May, and - we quote - "on the sout east side of the Region covering services between London and Kent, the prime task has centred on peak period punctuality which has not maintained its expected standard of reliability since the timetable was recast last May".
6.
Readers with an hour to spare and an interest in the NHS provision for our area might like to go to the Library (or to the Council Offices from Monday to Friday next week when the Library is closed) and browse through a fat document issued by the Hastings Health Authority and newly made available for public study - "Strategic Plan, 1985 to 1994".
Before we studied it, we had spoken with Mike Haward of the Health Authority, who explained that it was a ten-year plan, the first under new legislation, which would be updated in five years' time by another ten-year plan - so that there was always a five-year overlap. Projects timed for the first five years were therefore serious propositions; those in the second five years were less certain, and would in turn appear in detail in the first half of the next plan.
What is certain is that the new District General Hospital in Hastings is due to open in 1992. The maternity and gynaecology section will not be there at the start, but the Authority is anxious to move that from the Buchanan as soon as possible thereafter.
From Rye's point of view, the hard facts come in the final section of the document: a timetable for the opening, closing and disposing of the Authority's various establishments in the District. In 1987/88 they plan to sell off a house in Rye (we understand that this is part of the Hill House complex). In 1989 Hill House Hospital itself is scheduled for sale, with part of its land kept back as a site for a health clinic. This appears in the 1990/91 provisions "subject to option appraisal", and in the following year Rye Clinic would be disposed of. Now comes the crunch - in 1992/3 they plan to dispose of Rye Memorial Hospital "subject to option appraisal and formal consultation".
On page 75, section 13 reads: "The need to maintain Rye Memorial Hospital as an in-patient facility must be reviewed. Views on its closure and the provision of a clinic facility as a replacement for the provision of out-patient clinics, limited casualty services, etc., are to be sought in order to plan the development of appropriate clinic provision to meet the health care needs of the local population. With the proposed closure of Hill House Hospital the development of a clinic on this site would have many advantages, not the least being the possible disposal together with Rye Memorial of the existing clinic in Ferry Road, Rye. This will also be subject to further assessment."
So it looks as if the present proposal is to close Hill House in four years' time and sell off most of the land, building a new health clinic there in 1990 or 1991 and then selling both the Ferry Road site and Rye Hospital. This would leave us, with a doubtless much improved clinic, but in a most inconvenient place from the point of view of the push-chair mums and the school dental service, let alone the Monday Club.
Mr. Haward made the point that the Strategic Plan is not a consultation document in the sense that direct comments are invited; the proper channel for communication is the Community Health Council based at St. Hele's Hospital. He also made it clear that before Rye Hospital was closed there would be full public consultation over a three-month period. Hill House's closure, however, seems to be a certainty (and what a superb building site it would provide!) Nothing is said about the future of Hill House School; but it is administered by the Education Authority, which doubtless has its own ideas.
For the statistically-minded, the document contains lots of graphs and charts about the medical needs of the area (which covers Hastings, Bexhill Rye and Battle plus the villages, and has more than twice the national average percentage of over-75s in its population). And for connoisseurs of the English language, we cannot resist quoting a phrase used for one set of figures - "patient throughput per bed"! We are reminded of John Smith, who as a very small boy came round from a tonsillectomy at the old White Rock Hospital to find himself parked across the foot of a bed occupied by a wounded WW1 soldier.
7.
Rye's St. John Ambulance Nursing Cadets were much honoured on Friday evening by the presence of the County Commissioner, Mr. John Shippam, who had driven 80 miles from Chichester to present Grand Prior Badges to no fewer than five cadets in the Division. He told the smartly-drilled unit that Rye was the best-turned-out Division that he had seen - always a sign of good officers, he added, and a credit to Mrs. Marilyn Mitchell. He was presenting the badges, he said, not in his own right but as representative of the Commissioner-in-General of the Order, the Duke of Gloucester, who had signed the accompanying certificates.
The Grand Prior Badge is at present the highest award which a cadet can win, and means three years' work in a total of twelve subjects. Mrs. Mitchell said wryly that she had never managed it, much though she would have liked to in the days when she was a cadet - "Wear your badge with pride", she told the winners. Around the walls of the Community Centre were eye-catching displays: a photo¬graph (taken by Peter Chillingworth) of each Grand Prior cadet in uniform, framed by her twelve certificates plus an example of the type of work done for one of them. The winners are Carol Chillingworth, Karen Pope, Ann Newman, Zena Streeten and Paula Sams. All five have figured in GAZETTE stories in the past two years about our very successful Nursing Cadet Division.
Seven new cadets were enrolled, by Area Commissioner Mr. Sharpe, in a ceremony wnich has its roots in the Order's twelfth-century beginnings: Lisa Ovenden, Nadine Mitchell, Kellie Parsons, Kirsty Piggott, Alison Woodman, Meta Maguire and Tanya Cutting.
The Senior Attendance Cup was shared by four cadets who had been to every meeting during the year: Jane Clark, Sally Mitchell, Claire Piper and Zena Streeten. The Junior Attendance Cup went to Michelle Cutting. Mrs. Mitchell's choice of winner for the Progress Prize was Sonia Bourn.
Among those present were St. John officers from Lewes and Eastbourne, and plenty of friends and parents - including Mr. Reg Hollands of Winchelsea Road, for whom this was a particularly nostalgic occasion. Not only does 1935 mark the sixtieth year since his own enrolment as a St. John Cadet, but in the middle of WW2 he was responsible for starting the Rye Nursing Cadets, which the Rye Division had lacked until then. This means that they have now been established for more than 40 years, and he is clearly very proud of them. As are we all.
Rye Rotary Club members were the judges of the Thomas Peacocke Lower School Speech Competition on Friday, when five teams - each of three pupils - addressed an audience of their schoolmates and visitors on a variety of subjects. Julian Underwood from 1.7 dealt with Spiders, Joanna Holland (also 1.7) with Horses and Ponies, Bernard LeRoux (2.2) with Radio - he had some particularly good special effects. Julian Alstin of 2.4 talked about Snooker, and Samantha Dalling fro 2.5 about Halley's Comet. Each speaker was introduced and thanked by colleagues from the same form. Samantha's talk was awarded first prize, with the spiders coming second, horses third and snooker and radio equal fourth. Rotary generously ensured that all fifteen competitors in this contest - the Final of a much larger competition - took home a prize. This is the tenth year of the Speech Competition, which was started by. the late John Corbett and has always been a very popular feature of the spring term in Lower School.
The same afternoon saw the Lower School Dance Competition, run on an inter-House basis and judged by Miss W. Johnson from Brighton Polytechnic. Here again Rotary had provided the House Shield and the prizes for dance progress, which went to Lorraine Charman and Lisa Ashbee in the first year, and to Nanette Randall, Victoria 'atiddett and Darren Hickmott in the second. There was a very tight finish for the House Shield - Sanders won it with 51 points, Meryon 50, Rother 49 and School 48. (One sign of the times was the number of boys taking part in the group dances; we counted 17 in the programme list. But Dance nowadays is very different from Dance twenty years ago, and there were certainly no willowy. lads in tights on Friday!)
Thursday, 21st Thrift Shop, Red Cross Centre, 10.30 to 4 (and Friday, Saturday) Local History Group, "Indexing" (Peter Smith), Library, 7.30
Friday, 22nd WI Group Market AGM (with a talk on pot plants), CC, 2 Nat.His.Sbo. "Amberley Wildbrooks" (David Chelmick), FEC, 7.30
Saturday, 23rd Cadborough Jubilee Social Club jumble sale, CC, 2
Sussex Trust for Nature Conservation, "In Badger's Wood" (illustrated lecture by Colin Page), CC, 7.30 - open to all
RH Sailing Club social evening, club-house, 8 (see page 3).
Movie Society Annual Dinner.
• Congratulations to Carol Chillingworth of Lea Avenue, now in her second year at Hastings College's Department of Hotel Catering and Allied Trades. At the annual awards ceremony last week, Carol was delighted to find herself the reci¬pient of the prize (given by Salmon's Bookshop) for "the most outstanding student of the general catering course in the first-year group" - the top award for her year! Her proud parents were invited to the presentation (and the refreshments, Mrs. Chillineworth told us, were delicious).
• Readers are reminded that the Library is closed next week from Monday to Friday (25 February to 1 March) inclusive, reopening on Saturday (see GAZETTE no. 117).
• We were over-optimistic last week about the lights in the Station Approach phone boxes; despite the work Seeboard were doing there on Monday, they were still dark on Friday evening. We will keep trying.
• Engineering work in the Sevenoaks tunnel will affect trains all over our area on Saturday and Sunday. Cm Sunday only there will be buses between Rye and Hastings, hourly but at unusual times; if you are using our line on Sunday (24th) either way, it would be advisable to check first.
• The theme of the 1985 Women's World Day of Prayer on Friday week (1 March) will be "Peace through Prayer and Action". Speaker in the Baptist Church at 2.30 will be Mrs. Iris Laker, and the service has been arranged this year by women in India. Refreshments will be available after the service.
• Vidler & Co announce well in advance that as the normal date of their April sale falls on Good Friday, the sale will instead take place on the Saturday (6 April) with viewing on the Thursday afternoon as usual. The March sale will be held on the normal first Friday (1 March); and there is a Special Evening Sale on Friday, 8 March.
• Friends of Miss Ada Pettitt, for so many years the proprietress of Pettitt's Stores at Idea and a member of the Methodist Church where her father once led the choir, may like to know that after some weeks in hospital she is now living permanently at Seafield, 124 Dorset Road, Bexhill. A Playden correspondent who has visited Miss Pettitt at her new home reports that it is very pleasant and comfortable, but Miss Pettitt would very much like to hear from - better still, see - some of her friends from the Rye area, j:f anyone can spare the time to write to her or even perhaps go over and pay her a visit?
• After their cancelled January meeting, Rye WI members much enjoyed Alan Dickin¬son's February talk on "Local Houses", illustrated with slides showing the development of building techniques over the centuries. There was also a members' craft show which included examples of Somerset patchwork, an art currently being taught by Mrs. Smith. _Members are reminded that the WI party takes place at the FE Centre on Friday week (I March).
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 - deaMiline Monday afternoon, Tuesday 9 am for emergencies. The GAZETTE costs 25p weekly, and is delivered to subscribers and pick-up points on Wednesday; some spare copies are available from Squirrels, 9-13 Cinque Ports Street, and back numbers from Cyprus Place. (Copyright Mary Owen 1985)