Two separate groupings of Cinque Ports Mayors had business in Rye last week - one of them some 700 years old, the other less than seven.Tuesday saw a private ceremony at the Town Hall, when the Standing Committee of the Cinque Ports Federation met on the home ground of this year's Speaker, our Mayor Roger Breeds, and handed over to him the Speaker's badge with its 14 diamonds, one for each Port and Limb (this badge was instituted by Captain Lovegrove of Winchelsea in 1971, and it was again a Mayor of Winchelsea who passed it on to Councillor Breeds).
Despite its venerable status, the Federation has very little business to transact nowadays - unless there should be a Coronation, when Barons of the Cinque Ports once more come into their own, or when there is the occasional for a meeting of the Brotherhood and Guestling and the Courts of Shepway.
The Association of Cinque Ports Mayors, on the other hand - founded in 1979 - meets four times a year and always holds its AGM in the home town of the Speaker of the Cinque Ports.It is primarily a social organisation, with itsmembership open to all present and past Mayors. They are usually accompaniedby their Mayoresses or spouses, and some eighty people partook of lunch at the Mermaid on Saturday after the meeting at the Town Hall. Spouses, however, are not invited to the meeting, so our Mayoress Amy Breeds took a group to the Rye Art Gallery - where, fortunately, two artists recently seen on TVS were showingtheir work - and some even braved the church tower.There were also two showings of the Rye Model for the distinguished visitors.
As well as Councillor Breeds, four former Rye Mayors attended the meeting: Elsie Philpott, Joan Yates, Jo Kirkham and Bill Simpson. The flag of the Cinque Ports flew from the Town Hall, and newly erected on the Landgate Arch to mark Roger Breeds's tenure of the Speaker's chair is the Cinque Ports coat-of-arms which Norman Jagger made to be similarly displayed when Joan Yates was Speaker.
A DoT press release announces that "a further traffic study will shortly be carried out in the vicinity of Winchelsea in connection with the proposed improvements of the A259 trunk road at Winchelsea and Rye. It will supplement the one carried out last autumn in connection with possible alternative options for improving the trunk route at Rye, on which we hope to consult the public later this year" - (is in October, see last week's GAZETTE). Mrs. Chalker's statement continues "The study will also provide us with updated traffic information required for the further development of the proposed Winchelsea Bypass, a preferred route for which I hope to announce shortly." She requests the co-operation of motorists at roadside interviews, and intends that any inconvenience shall be kept to a minimum.
The timing of the Winchelsea route decision becomes increasingly interesting. When the public consultation took place in November 1983, the literature implied that decisions were usually made public within six months or so. After a year, we were told that some decisions took longer than others... After eighteen months, it begins to look as if the Department has unofficially taken the very sensible view that the two routes should be considered as one, a view which was stated very forcibly at the time at all levels, from parish councils to Westminster. Now Mrs. Chalker hopes to announce a decision on the Winchelsea route"shortly". But back in January Icklesham Parish Council was told the same thing. (So we wonder if in government circles the word "shortly" has something in common with the length of a piece of strings)
Mrs. Freda Holmes, of Udimore, died in hospital on 20 May after a very short illness. She was the daughter of the Rev. Guy Bates, of Iden (one of the founders of Rye Golf Club), and was born in 1897; her husband, always known as A.K., came from a farming family in Udimore and they were married when he returned from the war. Together they farmed Parsonage Farm, where they were to live for the best part of 40 years. As a young woman Mrs. Holmes was devoted to country-dancing - but in 1934 she realised that this would be no help in the storm to come. She joined the Red Cross, and continued to work for the Society for the next fifty years. When war did come in 1939, Mrs. Holmes became Commandant at Rye; for some time she ran, under the auspices of the Red Cross, a military hospital at 20 Watchbell Street for troops stationed in the area, and also worked in the first-aid post which was opened at Hill House whenever an air-raid was imminent. Meanwhile A.K. was servingwith the Home Guard. Parsonage Farm became a temporary home-from-home for many people at that time, particularly Canadians - girls from the Canadian Red Cross, repatriated prisoners, and troops stationed round Rye; the family kept up the contacts made then, and later Mrs. Holmes visited Canada and welcomed many of her Canadian guests back to Udimore. In the early 1950s she and the late Miss Middle-ditch were instrumental in acquiring Dolphin House for the local Red Cross (it was formally opened in 1954 by Lord Woolton), and the two friends also founded the BRCS Over-60s Club in Rye. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes farmed until 1956, when they moved to Cross House where A.K. died three years later. Mrs. Holmes continued her work for the Red Cross, making the rest-room for the Blood Transfusion Service her own special province - when she retired 18 months ago after breaking her hip, she had been its presiding angel for 43 years! In addition to her Red Cross work, her upbringing as a parson's daughter enabled her to give invaluable help to the church at Udimore - where her funeral was held yesterday.Mrs. Holmes, who lost two sons in the war, leaves a daughter and a son. She will be remembered with great affection and respect in the community which she served and supported in so many ways for so long.
Mrs. Eve Le Breton, of Sea View Terrace, died recently in London, where she had gone a few months ago to be near her daughter. She was 68, and had been ill for some years. Mrs. Le Breton first came to Rye for a week's convalescence with friends in Mermaid Street; thirty years later she was still here.While staying in the town she met Jack Le Breton, the rather surprised new owner of the Hope Anchor Hotel (he hadn't really intended to bid for it when he dropped in at the auction); she went to work there as his secretary, but soon found herself helping him to run the hotel as his wife. It was a brief but delightfully memorable period in the hotel's existence, and Mr. and Mrs. Le Breton left behind many friends in Rye when they finally sold it and moved away. But before too long they returned to the area, and were living in Winchelsea when Jack died in 1978. Mrs. Le Breton was a talented pianist, and had a beautiful singing voice, though she never played or sung professionally. A grandmother, she leaves a daughter, and a son now living in America.
The particularly loud clap of thunder on Sunday afternoon meant a nasty fright for the 16 people having tea at the Old Vicarage in Church Square. Ten minutes earlier, rain had driven them indoors from the garden - which was just as well, since the lightning struck a chimney and brought down one of the pots, chunks of brickwork and roof tiles into the garden and the path beside the churchyard. The chimney carried the television aerial, and Ernest Thompson fears that half-a-dozen of the sets in the guest bedrooms are damaged. He tells us that all his visitors stayed to finish their tea - indeed, if ever there was a case for a good strong cuppa with plenty of sugar, this was surely it!
The Rye Mencap group heard yesterday that they are being given a minibus by the Variety Club of Great Britain, jointly with Hill House School (which was their intention all along). Vickie Piper is over the moon! Details next week...
- 3 - THE RYE GAZETTE, 29.5.1985
The Rotary Club of Rye and Winchelsea is in process of handing out an incredible £11,000 to a wide range of charities and good causes generally. (Surely, we asked immediate past president Clive Gilbert, this had not been raised locally just over the past year? - no, Rotary recently sold its holiday chalet at Maddiesons, and the proceeds of this are included in the money now being distributed.) In the past twelve months Rotary has made four donations of £1,000 each: to the Lifeboat House, the Eye Laser Appeal, the Community Centre, and Water Aid*. Among other local beneficiaries from its generosity have been the Day Centre, Rye Playgroup, St. John Ambulance, the Scouts, and local hospitals and schools. Cheques for £250 have gone to Northiam Club and Beckley Recreation Centre, and many readers will by now have taken the weight off their feet on the seats which Rotary gave to Rye. £270 was pledged for Aid-Call equipment for MS victims, highlighted by George Cumming's recent London Marathon run.
In addition to the £7,000 which has already been given, Rotary has promised three more very generous donations.The largest - £2,000 - will go to the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve and will mean that electricity can be laid on to the pump which will keep the water-level stable; this had been a major headache for the Friends when they discovered what the cost was going to be. Another £1,000 goes to the St. Michael's Hospice Appeal at Hastings; and the remaining £1,000 will take the form of ten £100 cheques, one for each of ten primary schools in the area. This money is intended to help with swimming and other sports costs which the Education Authority is no longer prepared to pay - either as a cushion against a sudden disaster to the school's existing pool, or to be spent on transport, etc., for a school which has no pool of its own.
Rotary's main fund-raising event, now held annually, is the Country Fayre in New Road - this year on Sunday, 11 August. Charity and trade stand space is available, and good local support will enable the Club to continue the sort of generosity recorded above.
* Water Aid is a project supported by the national Water Authorities including the SWA. It aims to provide adequate and clean water supplies to Third World communities, particularly in Africa, and the contribution from the Water Authorities includes not only advice on paper but sometimes on-the-spot surveys by members of their highly skilled staff. Rotary's contribution means that a hospital in Uganda will now be able to rely on the pump which draws up its water supply.Clive Gilbert, whose business is in Hastings but who lives in Iden, goes to Yorkshire at the weekend to take part in the Lykewake Walk (40 miles covered within 24 hours, but he says 16 hours is the normal time taken), and he is already sponsored for Water Aid to the tune of £100 or so by business colleagues and fellow-Rotarians.If there are people in Rye who would like to support this worth-while cause, Mr. Gilbert tells us that there will be sponsor forms at Serendipity and Landgate Stores.
Lucky winner of the portable television set, given to the local MENCAP branch's Spring Draw by Jempsons of Peasmarsh, is Mrs. Marjory Nettle of Pottingfield Road. On Monday Mrs. Joan Yates pulled out the winning tickets - there were almost 5,000 sold in less than a month - and congratulated the chairman, Mrs. Vickie Piper, and her committee on the progress made by the group founded just a year ago: "May you go on from strength to strength!" she said. The draw was made at the George Hotel, by kind permission of manager Adam Terpenning, and there were 25 prizes in all (but none of them, unfortunately, going to any of the people who turned up to witness it!).Second prize, £30-worth of theatre ticket vouchers given by the Society, went to Mrs. E. Shallcross of Hastings; third prize, a selection of wines given by Rye Rotary Club, to Nicky Farmer of Peasmarsh.
Vickie Piper is most grateful to everyone who gave prizes (an unusual one was an oil painting by local artist Raymond Price), and particularly to the local business community which has so many calls on its generosity: vouchers came from James Kimber, the George Hotel, the Queen's Head, Salon 54, Woolworths and Debenhams.
Winners came from all over the area, reflecting the branch's wide support. When expenses are paid, they reckon on a profit of somewhere well over £400.
4.
A report from East Sussex and Kent County Councils on the latest developments in the Rural Development Area reveals a position that, after all the initial optimism, looks rather uninspiring. The Development Commission has considered 16 projects which "the Working Parties would wish to implement in 1985/6". For some of them funding from RDA resources is not required:: these include a scheme for loans and grants to small rural industries on the Marsh, already in existence; the CoSIRA/Hastings Business Ventures clinic in Rye; the provision of employment opportunity information in libraries; a product directory of firms in the RDA; tourist information provision (two projects); and a newsletter about the RDA appearing two or three times a year. The Commission has agreed "in principle" to support the provision of workshop units in Lydd and at Appledore Station, and also to contribute to the costs of employng a field officer to provide a focal point within the RDA for an initial three years.
Then we get down to hard cash - which is, from the point of view of the general public, what this is all about. They have promised 100% funding for 10,000 sq.ft. of industrial floorspace in New Romney, and are willing to go halves with Rother in converting Udimore School into workshops. There is the possibility of spending £120,000 to £150,000 on more industrial units in Harbour Road if there are thought to be not enough private schemes of this kind already (and there do seem to be a good many already, one way and another). They are quibbling over producing £550 for the 1985 edition of a promotional leaflet for the Marsh churches (but this is apparently not quite as mean as it sounds, they don't want to pay for something that someone else will finance and they are negotiating with the English Tourist Board!).
This leaves the two projects that directly and immediately concern Rye: the Harbour Road junction and the Sports Centre.We were told by an ESCC spokesman that the £5,000 which the Commission has pronr'sed (25% of the cost of building a new footpath and footbridge) is not its only contribution - pressure from RDA has persuaded the D o T not to insist on traffic lights there, which means that ESCC can now afford to pay for the rest of the minor improvements which will "unlock" the area for industrial development - and hence jobs. Fair enough; but what areall the people who get jobs in these mushrooming industrial units going to do in their spare time? Enjoy a workout in the Sports Centre, perhaps? Perhaps "The Commission may be prepared to consider some modest funding, especially if the Centre caters for wider community use.Further Commission guidance will be given in due course."(See page 7 this week for the latest Sports Centre news.) Like we said - not very inspiring, so far anyway. Perhaps Section 2 of the report, "Studies of Opportunity and Need 1985/6", will produce something more exciting in due course. What people here are saying increasingly is that the prime need is for something substantial, soon - "putting their money where their mouth is" was a suggestion from one disenchanted reader.
The Bradford football tragedy echoes down to the smallest clubs.Rother has rightly been checking on sports ground stands in its area, and Rye United Football Club has received a letter reminding the Club to keep its stands in good repair, clean and free from litter.However, we are glad to say that the hazard on the Salts in the event of a fire is not overwhelming - the two narrow open-fronted shelter stands accommodate only two rows of spectators...
A welcome local exhibitor at the Craft Market this month was Maggie Regendanz from Iden. Maggie, who is 21, is having considerable success with her knitwear business, set up less than a year ago at her home, Corkwood Farm in Readers Lane. She offers a range of plain sweaters, plus others patterned to her own designs - and she can incorporate a one-off logo or lettering if required; a Rye Harbour Nature Reserve design is a speciality. The Craft Market is at present her only retail outlet in Rye, but she can be contacted at home on Iden 289.
5.
For the record, we can now tell the "inside story" (quite literally) of what happened when the RegoatCinema was bombed - see the letter from Mr. Funnell of South !Leighton in the Sussex Express which we quoted last week.Two people were killed - a despatch-rider passing along the road, and the relief manager (the regular man was on holiday). Two other people were rescued, and one of them, Bill Carey of Udimore Road, can vividly remember that September day in 1942.
He had just got home for a week's leave after two chilly years with the RASC in the Arctic.It was a lovely sunny day, and since his mother - who had been hop-picking in Peasmarsh - was due to collect her pay, he decided to walk out there with her. On the way back they stopped once or twice, and were standing outside the cinema looking at the "stills" when a group of German planes came in low over the Town Wall from the south, machine-guns blazing.Mr. Carey pulled his mother into the shelter of the cinema canopy, and thought they were safe until he saw falling from one of the planes a bomb presumably intended for the railway line. With hindsight, he reckons that it went straight through the roof and detonated only when it hit the ground, blowing all four walls outwards. The entire front of the cinema fell out and folded over the Careys rather than falling on them to which they owed their lives.
They were, of course, dug out - Mr. Carey remembers a school-mate, Ted Vicarey, as one of the rescuers. (Mr. Funnell and his mates were among the others; his letter recalls that the victims were completely covered in the grey dust.) A parson, Mr. Crouch, was there, and also Dr. Button whose pain-killing injection eventually put paid to Mr. Carey's memories for the time being. Both he and his mother were in Rye Hospital for a couple of weeks, and were then moved to Pembury, at that time part of Guys.Bill Carey managed to rejoin his unit after some weeks, but Mrs. Margaret Leopold tells us that her mother was badly hurt and her recovery took a very long time indeed. They told her daughter that when they dug Mrs. Carey out, conscious, what seemed to worry her most was the loss of her hat - so they found it for her in the debris and took it up to her in the hospital. But her handbag with the hop-picking money, Mr. Carey thinks, was gone for ever; and he himself never did get either compensation or coupons for the suit which was ripped to pieces by the time they got him out - because he had no business wearing civvies in wartime, even on leave, and could well have landed in trouble for it if he had pressed his case!
We mentioned to Mr. Carey the story told us by Mrs. Jenkinson about the lump of concrete falling out of her High Street ceiling which her somewhat shaken builder 3eaentified as being part of the cinema; Mr. Carey capped it by telling us that _ me of the cinema's seats were found blown into the Gun Garden. Leslie Stutely recalls that his father's Mayoralty just after the war was marked by a long battle waged with Them to get the Rye cinema rebuilt, at a time when cinemas were bottom of the priority list.There was, Mr. Stutely pointed out over and over again, nothing else for the young of the town to do in the evenings. Ultimately he won, and the Regent was the first cinema in all England to be
Rye - though only incidentally - appears on television again next month. In July last year (GAZETTE no. 92) an exhibition opened at the Rye Art Gallery in Ockman's Lane which gave a great deal of pleasure to many people - "That's Shell", a selection of the pictures commissioned by the petrol people for their advertising campaigns over the past 60 years. In September, HTV were in the gallery filming for a programme to be called "The Art of Persuasion", part of a new series on advertising, in which Christopher Frayling was talking to Vernon Nye, who had been instrumental in assembling the Shell collection. Now Margaret Casson has heard from HTV that the series goes out on Channel 4 on Mondays at 6.30, with the Shell programme on 17 June. (The hymnsinging on BBC1 is due to go out in August, and the "Timewatch" programme on Samuel Jeake has now been postponed until the autumn, Geoffrey Bagley has been told.)
For a long time now the County Council has admitted that Thomas Peacocke School is due for a major package of improvements, of which the gym - which may or may not end up as the Sports Centre (see page 7) - is only a part. About eighteen months ago the school officially reached the top of the Education Authority's list for capital works. Then, on government instructions, the list went into deep-freeze; but the school was - presumably? - still at the top. PTA secretary Hilary McDonald reminded the audience of this at the meeting at the school on Friday to discuss educational resource spending. It was therefore very unexpected to hear five minutes later from the lips of the Chairman of the Education Committee - who had sought a briefing from the Chief Education Officer before leaving for Rye - that the school was "getting near the top" of the list.
This discrepancy is disquieting, to say the least. We are asking the Information Officer at Lewes, whose thankless tank it is to handle questions from the newspapers, to find out for the GAZETTE whether or not Thomas Peacocke School is still at the top of the capital projects list - and if not, why not? We will let you know the answer as soon as it arrives.
In the chair on Friday was PTA chairman Rowena Varley. On the platform sat Ken Warren, MP, as promised, and also the brand-new chairman of the County Education Committee, David Russell of Crowborough (whose children, he told the audience, attended comprehensive schools).In the good-sized audience were parents from Rye and the villages (some whose children were still only at primary school), a large number of teachers, and a few of the TPS governors.
Some people had feared that the meeting might degenerate into a shouting-match over teachers' salaries, and we are happy to say that nothing of that kind happened at all. Salaries were mentioned by several speakers, but only as part of the general protest. Other shortfalls mentioned were equipment allowances, which meant that departmental heads had to choose between replacing breakages and buying new textbooks (one parent reported that his child was working from a book published in 1947); cleaning-hours, which meant that the excellent cleaning staff simply could not get round the work as they would wish in the time allotted to them; and repairs. When Mr. Russell said that ESCC was "renowned for good housekeeping", there was cynical laughter from the audience of householders, who know what happens when even minor domestic repairs are neglected for any length of time. There were questions about rate-capping, about the reduction in university places, about the standard of education in the county generally - "only the best is good enough for our children" said a Three Oaks parent. League tables in which East Sussex figures prominently near the bottom were referred to, but Councillor Russell declined to be impressed by them.
One new economy on the part of the County Council is causing much bitterness among parents in the villages. Pupils who live more than three miles from the school get bus (or train) passes, of course, and always have done - but as from next term, only if they are under the statutory school-leaving age of 16.Once pupils are in the Sixth Form, whether for one year or for a full A-level course, the parents will have to buy the termly season-ticket themselves and then reclaim the money from ESCC - all but a flat-rate Z4 a week which they will have to find themselves. This means, of course, a most unwelcome and sometimes impossible outlay three times a year even after the repayments arrive (and how long will that take?); and a parent with two bright children a year apart in age and both taking A-levels would be paying out nearly £150 net in the first and third years and some £300 in the second year, simply for the doubtful privilege of living in one of the villages.This move was news to Ken Warren, who promised to look into it and see what could be done.
We are not attempting to report the whole meeting; if you are really interested, you ought to have been there! But it was certainly worth-while. Ken Warren's presence and obvious interest were appreciated; and both PTA committee and audience were pleased that Councillor Russell had made the effort to attend. He is to come back and see round the school at work, taking a good look at the problems.As someone said, the school is getting good results in bad conditions; but how much better those results could be in good ones.
Nomination forms for the Town Council election (27 June) must reach Bexhill Town Hall by noon
Playden WI Summer Fair, FEC, 10 to 12
Rye Conservative Association coffee morning, 113 Udimore Road,10.30
FRAG talk, "Modern Landscape" (Ian Jeffrey), TB, 8
BRCS Hearing Circle, Red Cross, 10.15 to 12
• Congratulations to Mrs. Ethel Bourn of Rope Walk - the wife of Frank and mother of Michael, Audrey and Margaret - who celebrates her 80th birthday today.
• Congratulations, too, to Wendy and Nick Barham, of Iden, whose third daughter Sarah Amelia was born on 21 May, a sister for Katie and Gemma and a new grandchild for Donald and Marjorie Giles of Rope Walk and Derek and Rosemary Barham of Iden.
• We give you plenty of notice of the Annual Town Meeting, on Tuesday 11 June at 7.30 in the Town Hall. This is the one Town Council meeting in all the year when members of the public can ask questions or indeed state their views_
generally.In recent years it has not been well attended; but with the Town Council by-election due just over a fortnight later, might this be an opportunity for all the candidates to show sufficient enthusiasm for the town's affairs to turn up anyway, if not to ask questions which will indicate their particular areas of interest? And perhaps the rest of us might feel like turning up to inspect the field!
• Jane Bowler, of Fair Meadow, will be playing in a 25-strong Chamber Ensemble from the East Sussex Youth Orchestra, as part of a concert arranged by Rotary in the Dome in Brighton on Sunday afternoon.
• Planning: yet another multiple applies hopefully this week for an internally illuminated sign in the Conservation Area - will they never learn? This time it is the TSB, who want to ornament their fascia with such a sign in blue, white and stainless steel, just under 36" x 18".
• Bowls: Rye played away to Fairlight on Saturday; they lost, but nobody minded because it was such a lovely afternoon out.
• The exhibition of miniature (half- and quarter-scale) furniture in Anglia's window at the moment is more relevant to Rye than might appear. Mrs. Cork, whose husband Clifford makes it in Teddington at present, tells us that they are hoping to move here before long - and when they do, we shall of course carry a fuller story. But you would enjoy looking at it now, anyway.
• Speaker at the Christian Lunch Club on Thursday next week will be Miss Hitchings, who has been a missionary in Zaire.
• Can anyone tell us which year saw Rye WI members taking part in the Bonfire Night procession representing Women of the Common Market? Help is needed to date a photograph.
• Congratulations to Rye Young Farmers Club! We have no local contact for them, so are lifting shamelessly from the Sussex Express the fact that they were the overall winners of the Young Farmers' events at the Fast Sussex Young Farmers' annual show at Plumpton recently.
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 and pick-up points on Wednesday; a few spare copies are available from Squirrels, 9-13 Cinque Ports Street, and back numbers from Cyprus Place.
(Copyright Mary Owen 1985)