... in the news as well as on the streets; we do have some stories that are not specifically wintry, but it is basically a one-subject GAZETTE this week!
First, the Thrift Shop this month has been cancelled, because of serious burst-pipe trouble at Dolphin House; it is too late for us to stop Wednesday sellers arriving, but please put word around among possible Thursday, Friday and Saturday buyers. Medical Loan is also out of action in the High Street for the present but, in a real emergency, help can be obtained from Rye 223584.
The chief topic of conversation in the town - apart from burst pipes, usually a matter for private sorrow rather than public condolence - has been the state of the streets. On Wednesday last week we were astonished to find a team of ESCC contractors shovelling the snow off the High Street pavements; the day before, they had done Cinque Ports Street - not that you would have known it 24 hours later, but that was hardly their fault. Some householders chanced all the horror stories about insurance liability and cleared their own pavements; some didn't... Of course, the strong men in big boots who work for the Council don't realise that not everyone can stride over the walls of snow which they construct in the gutter; self-help took over here too, and sundry citizens with shovels made their own crossing-points - but there were still old ladies walking in the road at great hazard simply because they couldn't get on to the safe pavements beyond the alpine ranges!
The main problem was not so much the pavements as the roadway. Cinque Ports Street and South Undercliff, being through roads, were cleared. But from there upwards the snow still lay thick and slushy on Monday morning, and complaints were coming in non-stop both to ESCC Highways at Bexhill and to the Council Offices (whose problem it really wasn't). By Monday afternoon, how- ever, plans were laid, and that evening when very few people were about two JCBs and their lorries moved into the High Street, loading up the snow and dumping it on Strand Quay (by kind permission of George Roberts of SWA) to be pushed into the river next morning. On Tuesday they returned to deal with the other roads which could be cleared by a JCB (the cobbled streets are not suitable for this mechanical treatment) - so, by the time you read this, things should have improved very considerably. When Ralph Olesen rang the GAZETTE to tell us what was proposed, we were much relieved to find him still cheerful under what must have been a very considerable strain; he has only limited resources, which have to be deployed first on the through roads so that traffic can be kept moving, before he can turn his attention to town-centre problems and outlying areas like Tilling Green and the road down to the school. (Snow lay in the covered part of Needles Passage almost as thick as elsewhere, having presumably been blown in at right-angles from The Mint!)
Meals-on-Wheels were delivered round the town just as usual - with the help of two taxis from Davie's fitted with snow-chains, whose drivers played a major part in the success of the operation (and even helped with the washing-up afterwards). Louie Cotton marshalled her cooks (Phyllis Jennings, Peggy Seymour, Winnie Warren, Doris Chatterton and Hilda Martin), and Percy Young, Pat Bryan, Pat Ciccone and Stephen Ingham were all out on the rounds plus Jimper Sutton with his four-wheel-drive vehicle. The only difference, says Sheila Barton with some pride, was that as the butcher had no chicken on Friday the normal poultry treat had to be replaced by mince with a pastry topping. (The village meals services get their food from Battle, which did create a problem; but Rye Police contacted Hastings Police, who delivered the meals to central points in a land-rover, and the local helpers got them round thereafter - not so much meals-on-wheels, probably, as meals-on-wellies!)
The snow report continues overleaf...
2.
"Milk float" took on a new meaning on Friday, when a welcome supply of Unigate cartons hovered above the old Weslake site in Harbour Road. The dairy had had a double delivery on Wednesday morning and nothing on Thursday, and were beginning to worry about the weekend until the Unigate depot at Headcorn said grandly "We will send the helicopter!". They did too, late on Friday afternoon; in fact the lorry got through on Friday morning as well, so there was plenty. Deliveries to Udimore were the worst problem; on Thursday a team got up to the ridge but could go no further, so they stacked the bottles in a wood intending to go back when the road was cleared. It wasn't cleared until 9 that evening, and they would have gone then - but in the meantime two Udimore men, knowing the situation, collected the milk from the wood and delivered it all along the road as far as the Plough, leaving the rest there - and kept a record of who had had what, so that the milkmen's books would be straight! Back in civilisation, a Church Square resident told us gratefully how her milk was delivered out of the back of a car - one milkman driving, the other walking beside with a shovel. (But there was also the story of the country customer whose milkman struggled across two fields to leave her pint - and who then rang the dairy to complain that it had the wrong coloured top...)
Final wry comment from the dairy: "We may be heroes now, but we'll be the forgotten men once they can get their cars out and go over to Tesco again!"
The Tuck Shoppe, one of our pick-up points for the GAZETTE, has a regular and devoted clientele for bread. But last week was something different. Alan Webb's assistant lives in Wittersham, and at Alan's suggestion took a few days of his holiday instead of attempting to get into Rye at crack of dawn; this left Alan on his own, and he baked, and baked, and baked... The trouble was, he told us, that it took three hours to produce the bread and only one hour to sell it, so he never really caught up with the demand. (However, "come back in an hour" meant that then you got a beautiful fresh loaf still warm from the oven, so no-one minded.) Alan has always been puzzled about the national reaction to really bad weather: rush out into it and buy enormous amounts of bread! Until he has sorted out the records, he isn't sure how much he baked - but three times as much as usual might not be a bad guess. There was a potential difficulty over flour: Longs' delivery didn't arrive on Tuesday from Ashford, and Webbs hadn't a great deal to spare - but Webbs do have a brother-in-law with a carrier's business, and it was a Bournes lorry already in Ashford which finally brought the flour back to Rye.
Alan told us, incidentally, that he can just remember how, in the winter of 1947 when they were still baking at the Mill, his father sent the bread down to the Harbour by boat, and delivered it round the town on a very impressive sledge specially made by Ellis Bros.
Newspapers have been chancy; one day there were none, one day Rupert Murdoch monopolised the newsagents' counters with only the Sun and Times on offer. The paper-boys were reluctant to hang about for late deliveries, and people who could collect their own papers were luckiest. The postmen got round, in the town anyway, with what post came through; but on Thursday they had to send vans over to Hastings to speed the mail which usually travels by train. On Friday, the trains were still in trouble; snow drifting at the Ashford end of the line meant that it was closed, and all London travellers had to come and go via Hastings. Briti.sh Rail didn't seem to know this at Charing Cross, and there was no warning for one Rye weekender who bought her ticket on Friday and innocently boarded the Ashford train as usual. She had a very expensive taxi-ride home with a driver brave enough to have a go - but was a godsend to the Ham Street and Appledore passengers they were able to drop off on the way!
In common with all East Sussex schools, ours were closed all last week. They reopened as usual on Monday - and one of the TPS office staff told us that it was noticeable how many of the the children couldn't manage to get in, while only the lanes coach failed to bring in its village passengers.
- 3 - THE RYE GAZETTE, 21 January 1987
Rye firemen made a rather cautious journey out to a chimney fire in Swan Lane, Wittersham, on Thursday night (this is not normally in Rye's area, but Tenterden couldn't get there). A tractor had been down the lane earlier, but the fire engine is wider, and they did have some sticky moments before they were
able to deal with the fire. (Expert driving there and back by Fireman Polley, added Sub-Officer Michael Bourn.) There was another chimney fire at Pett at the weekend; but mostly the Fire Brigade kept their fingers crossed that no-one down the back lanes would need them. Flooding, we asked? Not in Rye, not by send-for-the-Fire-Brigade standards anyway; though Michael has heard several sad stories of people on the Estate whose upstairs neighbours had gone away without turning off the water, leaving their pipes to burst and drench the flat below.
There was nothing in the press book, at the Police Station, except a plea to keep an eye on elderly neighbours. Drivers generally were being very, very good, we were glad to hear, and there were far fewer cars on the road than usual anyway; by Monday the main roads had all been cleared (and, with luck, by the time you read this no-one locally will still be snowed in). It was at the Police Station that we learnt why the small gritting lorries can't be used in the town centre (the big ones are of course too wide); the mechanism doesn't rotate unless the lorry is travelling at 25 miles an hour or more - which is rather too fast for a High Street full of people, snow and parked cars!
A police land-rover forced its way down Leasam Lane with supplies for the TPS boarding house at the far end - and took back a load of young volunteers to help out at Rye Hospital. The girls went in to cope with the chores in place of regular staff who couldn't get to work, while the boys shovelled the entrance clear, and next day did the same for Badger Gate, Devonport House and the police station. (Badger Gate's heating had packed up on the Sunday, but Mrs. Sinden tells us that Rother promptly supplied heaters and had it mended next day.)
Hill House's complex road system had to await the attention of Tom Smyth, with a big snow-plough which also cleared Leasam Lane; he would like to have used it to clear Cyprus Place (where he lives) but couldn't get it down the little street because of the cars - which regularly park long-term all year round on the one-hour dotted lines, but must have been genuinely stuck there on Wednesday.
The Williams boys left Rye on Wednesday evening to make sure of getting to market early on Thursday morning, killing time in London until the wholesalers opened up at 3 am. They got back as far as Pembury, only to be held up by police who were rationing the number of lorries they allowed through, and they finally got home to Rye with the weekend's fruit 'n veg at about 1 pm. The next trip, early on Monday morning, was less difficult - but they were still glad to get back!
Quite a number of shopkeepers looked out of their windows first thing on Wednesday morning at the reputedly 10" of snow which fell during the night, and decided it wasn't worth it; but some came in from their homes outside the town and opened up as usual. (Thanks to Janet Denny's mother Mrs. Carter, our Penny Royal subscribers were able to collect their copies on Thursday; the Dennys themselves were snowed in at Float Farm, below the Udimore ridge, for the entire week!) Barclays, whose manager lives in Tunbridge Wells, was shut for three days, with Lloyds doing the honours as far as possible for customers of both banks, and the three building societies were also closed mid-week.
Weather permitting, Rother's Planning Committee at Bexhill tomorrow will begin at 10.30 instead of 2.30, to make room for the business of the special meeting postponed from 15 January. Housing business was postponed from the 12th to the 19th, Recreation & Tourism from the 13th to the 16th, and Environmental Health on the 20th was put forward from 6.30 to 2.30. "If the weather condi- tions do not improve, even these revised dates may require postponement" added David Powell's letter to local-paper editors on 14 January; it rather depends whether he dictated it on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, doesn't it!
4.
(We were told this as a perfectly true story, though it is hard to believe.) Joyce Lawrence, who works at the Tower Laundrette in the afternoons, came in on Wednesday to find one of the driers occupied - by a young man, stark naked except for his vest. The rest of his wardrobe was going round in one of the washers; and presumably feeling cold in his insubstantial attire, he had used a 10p piece to warm up a drier and then tucked himself into it like a dormouse. This sort of treatment isn't good for driers, let alone for public decency, and Mrs. Lawrence sternly ejected the unusual load to sit quietly and wait until the machines had finished with the rest of its wardrobe.
Anthony James says that although his December ad in Fixtures had recommended the laundrette as "the warmest spot in Rye", this wasn't quite what he'd had in mind!
Alma Fabes, staying in during the bad weather, went through some old papers - and found some more weather, just as bad. A handwritten sheet, apparently copied from the Hastings & St. Leonards Observer of 29 March 1879, records a Christmas snowstorm in Rye in 1836. (Why the Observer was writing about it more than 40 years later is not clear, but presumably there had just been something similar - which, for the benefit of future historians, is exactly why we are writing about it now!) It started snowing on Christmas Eve, stopped obligingly on Christmas Day long enough for people to go to church and get home again to dinner, and then continued until the evening of Boxing Day - by which time, of course, the roads were chaotic. The London coaches didn't run for a week, and there was no post for three days (presumably thereafter it was brought on horseback) - and it took the mailcart three hours to get out to Beckley. "The streets of Rye were so full of snow that the inhabitants employed 70 men for five days to carry it away, and the turnpike road had to be opened by men employed in the different parishes through which it passed." (Then as now!) It was estimated that ten to fifteen thousand sheep died in the snow, out on the marshes.
An earlier snowstorm which cut off the town brought George I here for an unpremeditated visit. The ship on which he was returning from Hanover early in 1726 took shelter in Rye Bay, and it was felt wise that the King should go ashore. He was landed on Camber beach "and from there he had to walk all the way to Rye, where he arrived very much fatigued" (as Leopold Vidler puts it). The Mayor, James Lamb, naturally offered His Majesty the hospitality of Lamb House, and the King was there for four days from 3 to 7 January, until the London road could be cleared (and London was very relieved when word finally came through that he was safe). In the meantime, Mrs. Lamb had given birth to a son, to whom King George stood godfather at the christening in St. Mary's on 5 January. The strain on the domestic arrangements at Lamb House must have been appalling: the missus in childbed, the King (who spoke no English) in the best bedroom, and no supplies getting through because of the snow...!
Some weeks ago we mentioned BR's new rule that, if you board a train without a ticket except at a station where the booking-office is actually closed, you can't take advantage of any cheap fares when you do finally come to buy your ticket. A friend who is not a regular train traveller (and now, she says, not likely to become one) didn't know this; recently - before the snow - she got to Rye Station at 7.45 for the 8.02 train and was still waiting in the ticket queue when it got in. Naturally she boarded it (she was going to Canterbury) - only to find that she then couldn't get a day return and had to buy two singles. Then, coming home, she was twice misinformed by Ashford Station staff and nearly packed off to London! The moral seems to be to buy your cheap-fare ticket the day before, either from the station or from Baldwins Travel; and to seek a second opinion at Ashford if you don't like the sound of the first one they give you.
5.
For the past six years Jenny Hadfield has been the local breast-feeding counsellor for the Natural Childbirth Trust. Her youngest child is now 7, and she runs a flourishing guest-house - and has therefore decided with some regret that it is time she handed over the counselling job to someone else.
Since the counsellor needs to have breast-fed at least one child, the job (which is voluntary) can only go to a woman - regardless of what Equal Opportunities legislation may say! (Often, Jenny says, counsellors are "between babies".) The part-time training is no joke; it lasts two years until the new counsellor can work on her own - though Jenny is perfectly willing to be back-up (and indeed librarian, as she has by now a good collection of literature on the subject). A counsellor offers a supportive ear over the phone, mostly at night; she does a ward round at the Buchanan, and rapidly becomes an expert on mastitis. But, says Jenny, it is a really worthwhile job; when she sees "her" babies, some of them now at school, and remembers that she was partly responsible for their good start in life, she feels thoroughly rewarded. Anyone who would like to know more about this work, so invaluable to desperate new mothers, please ring Jenny.
Assuming Rother's Environmental Health Committee was able to meet yesterday, one of the agenda items members will have considered was a report about the appointment of a District dog warden. This was turned down by the Council some time ago, as being too expensive to do properly and pointless to attempt otherwise; but it has now simmered up to the surface again and there is a long report on the aims of such a scheme and several possible ways of implementing it. Depending on how it is done, the cost for the first year is likely to be between £13,000 and £16,000.
One of the questions to be considered is whether the warden, if appointed at all, should work in Bexhill only, since (we quote) "to date, the majority of complaints received by the Authority relate to dogs fouling in the Bexhill area". (If the volume of complaint has any relationship to the volume of dogs' mess deposited, the pavements at Bexhill must be ankle-deep - it's bad enough here!) If the job is restricted to Bexhill, then Bexhill can be asked to pay 20% of the cost; but the rest of us would still share the remaining 80% and get no benefit at all (unless, of course, we were in Bexhill).
The report concludes "The employment of a dog warden on a one-year contract would serve to demonstrate to the minority of inconsiderate owners that this Authority will not tolerate continued indiscriminate fouling; it would, at the same time, offer a constructive framework for advice and reply to public enquiries. At the end of the one-year period, a review of any service intro- duced during that time would offer the ability to assess an effective route to increased controls as necessary."
Bexhill and Rye already have byelaws to the effect that owners of dogs fouling the footway of any street or public place will be liable to a fine of £50 (for some reason, Battle doesn't - don't they have this problem?) But Bother would obviously like to educate rather than sue its dog-owners, and this is clear from the proposed job description. The suggested advertisement says that applicants must be prepared to work unsocial hours; if the warden is to cover Rye effectively, patrolling between 6.30 and 8.30 am should frighten quite a few offenders into going out equipped with pet-scoops or plastic gloves and little doggy-bags. (We were very impressed to hear about one of the leading members of our business community, who was seen dealing in just this way with his dog's problem, with considerable dignity and complete aplomb. If he can, so can other people!)
This particular committee agenda, available to the public in the Council Offices, also contains interesting reports on the system of cleaning public loos and collecting refuse - we hope to summarise them in a later issue.
6.
Slipped inside a scrapbook lent to us recently were a few local newspaper pages some fifty years old. They included a virtually full-page report from the Sussex Express on the fourth Rye Carnival, on August Bank Holiday 1938. The entertainment on the Salts provided plenty of sports, serious and otherwise. There was a baby show - won by Baby Bowen (12/1>8-months class), from New Winchelsea Road, by the Wall twins (6/12-months class) of Richmond Villas in Rope Walk, and by Baby Smith of Cinque Ports Street, who was just three months old. (Do any of them still live here?) There were a great many floats, among them one from the Rye Elephant Club (what on earth was that?), and "the members of the Rye Fire Brigade, on the fire engine, were among the most energetic of collectors". The Carnival Queen was Dorothy Paine, attended by Noel Sheather and Betty Hadaway, and Carnival chairman was Laurence Perugini with Alfred Horner as his general secretary. The fun included a drag glamour-girl competition, won by Miss Cadborough (Fred Sellman) with Miss Wish Ward (A. Pope) as "her" attendant - "Thirteen men entered, and their appearance varied from the matronly to the extremely girlish" says the reporter demurely! The celebrations wound up with a dance for 600 people, using both floors of the Monastery. The money raised for Rye Memorial, RESH and the Buchanan hospitals was well up on the 1937 figure; indeed, the organisers hoped that it might be as much as £160...
There is also a copy of the entire Sussex Express for a wartime week in November 1943. Of its eight pages, one is given over completely to farming news. There are plenty of estate agents' ads and a large number of very agricultural small-ads - goats for sale, a boar at stud, sheep keep wanted, jobs for cowmen and carters and a vacancy for an under-shepherd at Lamb Farm, East Guldeford. Daily helps, mothers' helps and housekeepers were just as much in demand then as now. You could have had a five-bedroom villa in Sidley freehold with vacant possession for £475. Top-rate agricultural wages were due to rise to 79s a week (just under £4) and casual labourers got 1/4d an hour. Space was found, even then, for the Children's Corner, with the Elkins and Auntie Ivy and the silver-paper and farthing funds, which continued for another 15 years or maybe more. The front page carried an announcement of the award of the DFM to Flt.Sgt. Engineer Jack Carey of Rye Harbour, son of the late manager of the Chemical Works, who had gone into the RAF from the Grammar School four years earlier (Jack now lives away from Rye, but his brother and three sisters are still here). There was a half-column report of the Rye Remembrance Service - and doubtless grumbles at the time, because Battle got a full column! The front-page lead, however, was the re-election of Brig.Gen. E.G. Wace as Mayor for a second year - his Deputy was Alderman Cooper, for whom Cooper Road was later named. Court cases included dangerous driving at Peasmarsh and sheep-worrying at Northiam, with Henry Burra as chairman of the Bench. And the Town Council instructed its Town Planning Officer to complain to the Ministry of Food that the use of Santa Maria in West Street as an office contravened the planning regulations! Not much changes, really...
As well as an application to convert Sea View Terrace into two maisonettes, with a new dormer window and other alterations, and an extension for Rye Harbour Village Hall and Social Club, this week's list shows an application for new fascia treatment for Woolworths. Under its previous owners, the shop was refused permission for an internally illuminated sign; the new owners of the chain are anxious to convert all their stores to the same appearance, and what is proposed this time is new red/gold lettering on a more-or-less-white background, lit from above by a shaded strip light the length of the sign - all centred above the main shop-front. The application mentions "replacing etched glass by clear", and we hoped that this referred to the blanked-off windows of the small shop; alas, this is not so, and seems to be simply an error in the wording of the application. Perhaps Planning might consider offering Woolworths a quid pro quo: if you want an illuminated sign in the High Street, do something about the ghastly small window!
7.
For the past two years, mid-January has been slack enough for us to find space for advance-notice diary material. This year is no exception...
FEBRUARY
1st Candlemas service, St. Mary's, 6.30
2nd Camera Club, competition with Battle, FEC, 7.30
3rd Greenpeace open meeting (evening, details later)
FRAG, Kate Dayson on Chelsea scent bottles, St.Studio, 8
6th Vidler & Co's monthly auction sale, 10
Movie Society, with guest speaker George Delemare, FEC, 7.30
11th TPS Parents Evening, 1st year
12th Coin Club, FEC, 7.30
13th Civil Service Retirement Fellowship coffee morning, FEC, 11
Nat.His.Soc., "The Italian Dolomites" (Ernie and Breda Burt), FEC, 7.30
Labour Party open meeting, slides on life in Nicaragua, FEC, 8.30
14th Greenpeace benefit concert, evening
16th Town Council, Planning Committee
Camera Club, competitions, FEC, 7.30
18th Thrift Shop, Red Cross, handing-in (selling 19th to 21st)
Landgate WI, talk by Pauline Chalk FSVA
Community Lunch Group, Clinic, 1
20th Thomas Peacocke School closed for in-service training
23rd Half-term week begins
Town Council, committees
26th Local History Group, business meeting, Library, 7.30
27th Nat.His.Soc., "Travels in Australia" (Brian Soper), FEC, 7.30
MARCH
2nd Camera Club, "Windows on the World" (Robin Roberts), FEC, 7.30
3rd Friends of Rye Art Gallery, AGM, St.Studio, 8
6th Vidler & Co's monthly auction sale, 10
Conservative Association AGM, with Ken Warren MP, TH, 7.30
Movie Society, instruction evening on "Sound", FEC, 7.30
Camera Club annual dinner
7th PTA Barn Dance, Upper School
9th Town Council, full Council and Planning Committee
11th Town Council, committees
12th Coin Club, bring and buy, FEC, 7.30
13th Civil Service Retirement Fellowship coffee morning, FEC, 11
Nat.His.Soc., "Crete" (Trudy Side), FEC, 7.30
14th Greenpeace clean-up, Rye Harbour beach
National Trust, "Images of China" (Brian Soper), CC, 2.30
16th Camera Club, "Imaginative Printing", FEC, 7.30
17th NSPCC AGM, afternoon
TPS Parents Evening, Vlth Year
18th Thrift Shop, Red Cross, handing-in (selling 19th to 21st)
Landgate WI, "Ellen Terry and Smalihythe" (Mrs. M. Weare), CC, 10.30
Community Lunch Group, Clinic, 1
20th RNLI public dinner (fund-raising event), George Hotel
Museum Association, "Rye Then and Now" (Frank Palmer), FEC, 7.30
24th Arthritis & Rheumatism Council, ploughman's lunch, CC, 12 to 2
26th Local History Group, Library, 7.30
27th Natural History Society AGM and members' evening, FEC, 7.30
28th Model Exhibition, TPS PTA, Upper School
(EASTER is late this year - Easter Sunday is on 19 April.)
It is not a very exciting two months, and the unfortunate clash of events on 20 March is likely to mean that both will be impoverished. Please get in touch with the Editor if you have anything to add to this list, as otherwise the event won't appear in the back-page diary for the appropriate week.
Thrift Shop CANCELLED, ARC coffee morning POSTPONED Rye Town Council Planning Committee (see below), TH, 7
ATC Presentation Evening, TPS, 7.15
Nat.His.Soc., "Seychelles, Unique by a Thousand Miles" (Mary Briggs), FEC, 7.30
Labour Party jumble sale, CC, 10 to 12 Greenpeace jumble sale, FEC, 2 to 4
WRVS Lunch Club, CC, 12.30 TPS Parents Evening, 2nd year
• Thursday's Town Council meeting should be of interest to everyone living in the middle of the town, since it has been called to hear about new ESCC proposals for street lighting - really a possibility, this time. Ken Shaw is expected to come over from Lewes to talk about the plans, and there will be samples of light fittings, etc. Members of the public will be most welcome to come and listen (but not to speak, as far as we know).
• We are asked to say that the National Trust meeting on 4 February at 7.30, which was to have been held at Winchelsea Village Hall, is being transferr to Beckley Village Hall (same day and time) - Winchelsea has burst pipes.
• All last week's meetings were cancelled or postponed; Colin Page's talk to the Camera Club, the Vlth Form Parents Evening, Ken Warren's surgery on Friday afternoon, and the National Trust talk on the Austrian Tyrol (a subject for which there might not have been great enthusiasm anyway, under the circumstances!)
• Jim Fiddimore of Iden Kennels carries round a stock of little yellow labels (issued by Petwatch) with sinister implications. He attaches one to the collar of any dog he finds straying, and the wording points out to the owner (when the dog gets home) that "your pet is worth a lot of money to a laboratory dealer or for his pelt"...
• We asked recently, in connection with a gift to the RNLI, if anyone remembered the real name of Sonny from Rye Harbour, who died as one of the Mary Stanford crew? We are told that this was probably young Charlie Southerden, whose relatives still live at the Harbour.
• And a final round-up of snow-stories:
Woolworths had the most amazing two-storey display of icicles on the back of the building, even more spectacular than those on the Ferry Road terrace beyond Tillingham Avenue. Though some houses right on the pavement still have their gutters fringed with icy spikes, we haven't heard of anyone being skewered - yet!
Condolences to Bournes, who last week had problems peculiar to furniture removers. If house A is suddenly inaccessible after the furniture for it has been loaded into the van, household A is homeless; and household B, who had booked the van next day, can't move out to allow household C to move in - and so on, in a well-organised chain, almost ad infinitum.
The builders of the traditional snowman with a carrot for his nose, much admired by people passing the Saltings Hotel forecourt, were not children but three grown-up young ladies - obviously enjoying every minute!
People surprised to get their GAZETTE last Wednesday owe a debt of gratitude to Bernie Fiddimore, who fought her way in from the wilds of Doleham to print it on Tuesday; and to Adam Harwin, our new Cadborough delivery-boy.
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office, published by Mrs. Mary Owen, 2 Cyprus Place, Rye, East Sussex, TN31 7DR (0797 222303) and printed by Cinque Ports Stationers of Rye. The paper costs subscribers 30p, and spares may be available from Cyprus Place. (Copyright Mary Owen 1986)