Cinque Port Coat of Arms

 The Cinque Ports Confederation  dates back to the 11th Century, during the reign of Edward the Confessor.  It was started by the ports Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich for mutual protecton and trade.  Edward  gave official recognition by granting a Royal Charter which was later confirmed by William the Conqueror .

Rye and Winchelsea became ’limbs’ of the Head Port of Hastings in the second half of the 12th Century.  They were incorporated as ‘Antient Towns’, which meant they were ‘worthy of veneration’.    Before Henry II died in 1189, he conferred on them the same privileges as were enjoyed by the original members of the Cinque Ports Federation.

The privileges were in exchange for services; the towns which formed the Confederation supplied ships and seamen for a set number of days per year and in times of trouble,    The privileges they received in return (legalised by Royal Charter in 1278)  enabled the Cinque Port towns to be exempted from many taxes, to trade wherever they wished and to hold their own courts.

12th to 13th Century Cinque Ports Ship

Apart from the five ports and the two antient towns, there are seven other members of the Confederation, which are considered to be Limbs of the other towns. These are Lydd (Limb of New Romney), Folkestone, Faversham and Margate (Limbs of Dover), Deal and Ramsgate (Limbs of Sandwich) and Tenterden (Limb of Rye).

In 1229 Rye supplied five ships for the King out of the Confederation’s total of fifty seven.  In 1337 the Hundred Years War began and the ships of the Cinque Ports were vital to the defence of England and for carrying the army to France. In 1415 the Confederation fleet transported Henry V and an army of ten thousand to Ifarfleur, which subsequently won the Battle of Agincourt.

The importance of Rye and Winchelsea, and the decline of Hastings elevated them to become Cinque Ports and Head Ports in their own right in the 14th Century although this does not seem to have been marked by any special event or legal formality. In typically English fashion the name of the Confederation was not changed, but continued under the somewhat cumbersome title of the ’Five Ports and Two Ancient Towns’.

Although the main duty of the Confederation was providing ships for the Crown, the Cinque Ports also organised and supplied Bailiffs to the Yarmouth Herring Fair,  an annual event which continued until the late seventeenth century. This big market and festival  fixed the price for the herring catch.  There were often clashes between the men of Rye and Winchelsea and the men of Yarmouth who resented the privileges held by the Cinque Ports towns.

The decline of the ports dates from the mid-14th century when changing ways of warfare made it necessary to have a more permanent marine force and the consequent larger ships were too big for the harbours, which had begun to silt up.   Despite the reduced strategic and tactical importance of the Cinque Ports fleet, the ports remained commercially active.  One Rye seaman accompanied Drake on his voyage around the world.

The Ports were asked by Queen Elizabeth to provide ships for the  Spanish Armada and in 1588 Rye, with its limb, Tenterden, produced–at twenty days notice–a ship of sixty tons called the William, a feat reflecting its relative prosperity at the time.

By the end of the sixteenth century a professional navy, forerunner of the modem Royal Navy, was established. The Cinque Ports continued their slow decline.

Today only Rye and Dover remain as true ports.   However, by providing ships and men for the Royal Fleet for some 400 years they laid the foundations of England’s maritime power, and their ceremonial importance–at Coronations for example– lasts to this day.

In their honour we have put together a display of posters and other items from their 40 years of singing.  The photograph, taken in Rye Castle/Ypres Tower, shows four founder-members, Lesley Brownbill, (conductor),  Jo Kirkham, Susan Manktelow, and Carole Osborne.

The Ryesingers have been loyal supporters of the Rye Museum — they recently  donated the proceeds of yet another lovely concert to our  Women’s Tower Project.  Here are some things to know about them:

• The Ryesingers held their inaugural meeting in 1971 with eight ladies.  The membership now totals about 40 and includes men.
• From that very first meeting their Conductor has been Lesley Brownbill who continued to fire members with her own enthusiasm and choose imaginative programmes.
• They have taken part in competitions all over the British Isles and appeared several times on TV and radio. They have also performed in Germany, France and Belgium.
• Their repetoire is very wide:  folk songs,  Gilbert and Sullivan, large classical works, church services, oratorios . . . .
• The Choir has sung for many civic functions in Rye.  One of the members from the beginning has been  Jo Kirkham (our Chairman) who, on becoming Mayor of Rye in 1979 immediately appointed Ryesingers as her personal minstrels — a medieval tradition revived.
• Ryesingers welcomed inn song Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother on her visit to Rye as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports in 1980.

Cross of Sacrifice, Ypres cemetery

Among the recent additions to the Ypres Tower displays is the model for the Cross of Sacrifice which Sir Reginald Blomfield (1856-1942) designed for the Imperial War Museum to commemorate soliders who lost their lives in the Ypres Salient during WWI.   but have no marked graves.  The  display has been donated by Priscilla Ryan and Paul Blomfield, grandchildren of Sir Reginald.   Copies of the cross are present in most Commonwealth war cemeteries around the world.  There is one in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church, another in Arlington Cemetery, Washington D.C. , honouring fallen Canadians.   The cross is usually of limestone on the face of which is mounted a bronze cross with the blade pointing down.

 The Menin Gate

Ypres, The Menin Gate

The most famous of Sir Reginald’s war memorials is the magnificent Memorial Gate to the Missing at Ypres,  Belgium, built by the British Government and unveiled in 1927.  It is located on one of the main roads out of the town that led Allied soldiers to the front line.   Some 300,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were killed in the Ypres Salient. 90,000 of  whom have no known graves.  The large Hall of Memory contains names on stone panels of 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Salient but whose bodies have never been identified or found; for lack of sufficient room here others are listed on another memorial.  At 8 p.m. each evening buglers from the local fire brigade sound the Last Post.

Sir Reginald and Rye

Sir Reginald was well-known before the war as a prolific British architect, garden designer and author of the Victorian and Edwardian period. In 1886 he married the daughter of Henry Burra of Rye where he designed several houses, including his own on Point Hill, Playden.   One he let to the American novelist Henry James.  He also designed the Rye, Winchelsea and District Memorial Hospital,

Saltcote Place and many of the houses on the Playden ridge.   Other pre-war projects included the building or renovation of country great houses (e.g. Chequers), university buildings (e.g.Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford) amd commercial and  buildings (e.g. completion of the Quadrant in Regents Street, London).

Saltcote Place

And that’s not all:

Did you know that Sir Reginald designed the pylons you see throughout the country?  His  familiar steel lattice pylon design has been in use since the 1920s but is now about to be replaced by a new T-shaped design, winner of a competition to develop a new generation of pylons to keep up with the UK’s goals for greener energy.

All the writers listed below lived in Rye and the immediate area — at least for a while.   There were many more—some living only slightly further afield– who visited Rye,  often as guests of writers listed below, and these will be the subject of a future article.     Stories Set in and Around Rye has recently been uploaded — you might be surprised to discover how many there are, for all ages,  and how good they are. Click on Literary Rye at right to see the article.   Meanwhile, for more information (with illustrations) on specific books and visits to the places local writers have lived, see the Literary Rye section of the excellent Rye Eye website.

AIKEN, Conrad (1889 – 1973) American novelist , poet,  editor  and critic who lived at Jeake’s House, Mermaid Street,  between 1923 and 1939.  His works include Great Circle, King Coffin and the ‘autobiographical narrative’ Ushant.  He edited the poems of Emily Dickinson, won the Pulitzer Prize with his Selected Poems as well as  many other awards and is regarded as an important influence on modern poetry.  He was a lifelong friend of T.S. Eliot and also a friend of Ezra Pound.  His three children also became well-regarded authors and together wrote a biography of their father.   

AIKEN,  Joan (1924 -2004) Born in Rye and a prolific writer like her older sister, Jane Aiken Hodge. Joan Aiken produced countless short stories and more than 30 books for adults (she was an expert on Jane Austen) and over 60 for children and teenagers.  The best known of these are the twelve linked fantasy books beginning with  The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (begun 1962). These are set in the author’s version of the 19^th century, when wolves have crossed through the Channel Tunnel to roam the land and the rulers are a line of good Stuart kings.  For younger readers a favourite is A Necklace of Raindrops (1973) with its eight delightful read aloud stories featuring a flying apple pie, a cat that’s bigger than an elephant, a house that lays an egg, storybook animals that leap out of their books at night. .   She was awarded the MBE for her services to children’s literature.  See also the article on Jeake’s House

BATSFORD, Sir Brian Cook (1910-1991), publisher, illustrator, painter and politician, lived at 10 Watchbell Street, then Lamb House, 1980 – 1987.   He is best known as Brian Cook, the illustrator/designer of the dust jackets of the highly-collectable Batsford books from the 1930s to the 1950s.

BENSON, A.C. (1862 – 1925)  Biographer and one of the most prolific and popular essayists of the Edwardian period. Son of an archbishop of Canterbury, editor of the selected letters of Queen Victoria, and author of “Land of Hope and Glory”  Lived at Lamb House 1919-1925. Works include  The Trefoil, Maggie Benson, From a College Window and Rossetti.  He sometimes shared Lamb House with his brother E.F. Benson.

BENSON, E.F. (1867 – 1940) Prolific novelist, autobiographer and biographer and now more famous brother of A.C.Benson. who lived at Lamb House 19-17-1940   Unlike Henry James, he took an active part in Rye’s politival and social life and served as Mayor 1935-37.  Yet while living in Rye he wrote over 40 books.  He is best remembered for his Tilling novels, social comedies set in Rye in the 1920′s and 30′s and featuring the rivalry between Mapp and Lucia.  Other works include Dodo, Our Family Affairs, Charlotte Bronte, Secret Lives and Final Edition.  There is an E.F. Benson Society which organizes events and exhibitions and meets annually in Rye.  Its secretary offers walks around Rye looking at the houses and places associated with Mapp and Lucia and their creator.  For details of these, and much else, go to the Society’s website:  E F Benson Society .  For an article on this website click here.

BRADLEY, Arthur G (1850 – 1943).   Biographer and travel writer who lived at The Red House (Tillingham Avenue before all the new houses were built) then at West Watch, Traders Passage. Of most interest to Ryers  is An Old Gate of England: Rye, Romney Marsh and the Western Cinque Ports (1918), with delightful line drawings by  Marion E.G. Bradley.  The 77 pages specifically on Rye are especially rewarding with its picture of the town 100 years ago but he goes on to cover Winchelsea, Northiam, Romney Marsh villages and the lands between. Excerpts on Rye are available here.   His other books  include The Story of the Kentish Cinque Ports,  the Highways and Byways series (Lake District, Scotland, Wilthire, The March and Borders,  Land of Wales ….), Canada and Life of Wolfe.

CLARK, Edmund John, M.D  (1799 – 1836)  Son of John Clark, Weslyan minister in Rye, he studied medicine at Edinburgh University.  nd was well-travelled.   He was an enterprising traveller and one of the few to climb to the summit of Europe’s highest mountain,  Mont Blanc.   He published  The Ascent of Mont Blanc in 1825.  William Holloway reports that on his return from this hazardous expedition he gave a very  interesting lecturein Rye, giving details of his journey and exhibiting specimens.   He died  at the early age of 37 and is buried in Cranbrook where he had been practicing as a doctor.

CHRISTOPHER, John (b 1922) , chief pseuudonym of prolific Rye author Samuel Youd   An award-winning writer of science fiction, much of it for teenagers, he has written some 70 books. The best known are The Death of Grass , The Guardians and  The Tripods  trilogy (The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire).    He is considered the successor to H.G. Wells and John Wyndham in that his characers are confronted with a major disaster which has huge implications for society and the world.    The Death of Grass, popular in the 1950s and 1960s is considered the definitive novel of its genre and has been on GCSE reading lists  while the award winning triology The  Tripods was the basis for a  1980s British television series filmed in Rye near the author’s  home at that time.  Empty World , set in Winchelsea, is still avidly read and recommended (e.g. in Germany) despite its bleak theme:   the main character is one of the world’s few survivors of a deadly virus.    The books are still being reissued. 

DARWIN, Bernard (1876-1961).  Writer, authority on Dickens and excellent golfer.   Grandson of Charles and Emma Darwin,  he was raised by his grandparents at Down House (Downe, Kent, English Heritage) where his widower botanist  father collaborated with the great naturalist on botanical experiments and publications.   He wrote for The Times for 45 years,  often writing one of its leaders, also for Country Life, and he wrote a much anthologised piece on W G Grace’s birth centenary. Twice  he was Captain of Rye Golf Club, in 1906 and 1956, a gap of 50 years!    He lived at the Dormy House by the Landgate in the 1950′s.   

Of his book of essays On Golf It has been said that “Nobody ever knew more about golf than Darwin or wrote about it so intuitively.”    In 2005, Darwin was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame  in the Lifetime Achievement category.    One of several collectors’  item children’s books is The Tale of Tootleoo (Nonesuch Press 1925) for which he wrote the verses, accompanied by22 full page colour lithographs by his wife, the engraver Elinor Monsell.  His brother-in-law  J R Monsell illustrated other children’s books by Darwin.  (Monsell was the husband of Margaret Irwin, see below.  Connections among Rye authors abound!)    

DICKINSON, Patric (1914 – 1994).  Poet, playwright, broadcaster, classicist, golfing blue and above all, a lyric poet.     As a radio editor and producer of distinction  for the BBC (1942-48)  he and the popular Home Service programme Time for Verse did much to bring poetry to a wider audience.  Once described as  a ‘poet impressario’, he was  known for his beautifully crafted poems, in the tradition of Housman, de la Mare and Geoffrey Grigson  From the time of his marriage to Sheila Shannon  in 1945, he and the family lived at 38 Church Square so it is only natural that many of his poems have Rye associations.  This is particulrly true of Sketches of Rye and Poems from Rye, read at the Rye Festival 1979. He also  translated the complete Plays of Aristophanes and Virgil’s Aeneid. and wrote an autobiography The Good Minute: Autobiography of a Poet-Golfer  (1965)    Rye golfers can still enjoy A Round of Golf (1950, recently reissued as a paperback classic) in  which he wrapped his descriptions of what he  regarded as the best 18 golf courses in England in much  history and anedcote.  Other titles  include This Cold Universe, Rift in Time, Not Hereafter,  Durable Fire, More Than Time, A Wintering Trree,  The Bearing Beast and A Living John.  

EDWARDS, Monica  (1912–1998).  Children’s author whose fifteen Romney Marsh novels are  still widely read. Her family moved to  Rye Harbour in the early 1920′s when her father became Vicar. She loved the area, and came to know the fishermen and the marsh farmers well (e.g. at Castle Farm).  She also explored the marshes beyond her front door and the coast path leading by the Martello Tower.  Like Malcolm Saville, she used these real places in her books.    All but Castle Farm, destroyed in WWII, exist in their correct places and can be visited today although she renamed them:   Rye is  Dunsford,  Rye Harbour Westling, Winchelsea Winklesea and  Camber Castle Cloudesley Castle.   Specific titles are mentioned in the article Stories Set in and Around Rye.   She also wrote for magazines and BBC Children’s Hour and the story for the  Children’s Film Foundation film Dawn Killer, set on Romney Marsh.

 The financial freedom gained from the success of her writing enabled the family to buy an old farmhouse and land in Surrey in November 1947. Punchbowl Farm was to provide the background and setting for many of her subsequent books,   Information about Monica Edwards, her books, the Monica Edwards Appreciation Society and its magazine Martello, as well as events and visits to places in the books can be found on the Monica Edwards  website.  

FABES, Gilbert (1894 – 1973)  Antiquarian bookseller in Rye and writer on first editions.  He published  Autobiography of a Book in 1926,  Romance of a Bookshop 1904-1929 in 1929,  and Modern First Editions: Points and Values (3rd ed.)  in 1932 . All three are still sought after by collectors.  He went on to publish journal articles and bibliographies of specific authors, among them D. H. Lawrence, John Galswrothy and Ralph Hale Mottram,  in each case concentrating on first editions, bibliographic points and values.  His daughter Alma Fabes wrote The Meryons of  Rye  Adams of Rye, 1985), an account of a Huguenot family  who  fled  from persecution by King Louis XIV in the late 17th century and became prominent citizens of Rye.

FLETCHER, John  (1579-1625)   Born in Rye, John Fletcher became one of the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day,  his fame rivalling Shakespeare’s.  He collaborated with Shakespeare, Beaumont and others, and followed Shakespeare as house playwright for the King’s Men.    Some believe his birth house was what is now Fletcher’s House, a popular Rye tearoom, but stronger evidence points to a former vicarage on the site of what Ryers know as The Old Vicarage.  Whichever is the case, Richard Fletcher, his Anglican minister father, was at the time serving in Rye and subsequently became Dean of Peterborough, Bishop of Bristol, Bishop or Worcester, then Bishop of London and chaplain to the queen in which capacity he was chaplain at the execution of Queen Mary.   

 We know that Fletcher had to fend for himself from the age of 17 when his father died and that he died of the plague at age 46 (a good age at the time). Within those 29 years he achieved much.  In 1606 he met the writer Francis Beaumont and began a creative partnership that was to produce 15 plays before Beamont’s untimely death from plague in 1616.  Fletcher went on to write another 16 plays under his own name, as well as collaborating with many of the prominent writers/actors of the day,   Shakespeare being only one of them  .   Wit, humour and romanticism are the essence of Fletcher’s writing and some plays still stand the test of time.    There is an active Fletcher’s Theatre group in Rye , promoting theatrical productions by Fletcher and his contemporaries.   For more  information about Fletcher, his work and the FletcherTheatre, go to Friends of  Fletcher Theatre  

GODDEN, Rumer (1907 – 1998)  Lived at Lamb House 1968-73 and at Hartshorn House 1973 to 1978 when she left to be nearer a daughter in Scotland.  One of the foremost English language authors of the 20th century, she wrote novels, biographies, children’s books,  poetry, memoirs of her childhood in a part of India that is now Bangladesh:: Two Under the Indian Sun (1966 with her sister Jon) and two further volumes of autobiography: A Time to Dance, No Time To Weep (1987) and A House with Four Rooms (1949) — some 70 works altogether. several made into films.   Her work has been translated into 17 languages.  

She excelled at writing about children. Of special interest to Ryers is A Kindle of Kittens (1978) a Picturemac for the very young.  Its  illustratiions by Lynne Byrnes  put the streets,  roofs, cats and townspeople of Rye between the covers.   (For more details go to Stories Set in Rye.)    Other books for children  include The Doll’s House (1947), The Mousewife (1951),   and Miss Happiness and Miss Flower (1961). In 1972 she won the Whitbread Award for The Diddakoi which has also been adapted for television.  Other books for teenagers which have been filmed are The Greengage Summer (1958) wherein four children in France are  rudely thrust into the adult world and The Peacock Spring (1978), an Anglo-Indian  coming of age story  (televised 1995).

She also excelled at nuns.  Black Narcissus (1938)  deals with the struggle of a group of nuns to maintain their convent in a disused Indian palace. it was made into a popular film and has never been out of print. While living in Rye she wrote another book about nuns, This House of Brede (1969), also filmed.  Despite the local name, the Bsnedictine convent in the story is modelled on Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire,

 In Two Under the Indian Sun, a memoir co-authored with her sister Jon in 1966,  she wrote “Our house was streaked with Indian or Indian streaked with English.”  The same can be said of her books — such as The River (1949) one of her most acclaimed novels which was made into a film by Jean Renoir in 1951–and of her life.  For twenty years she ran a dance school for English and Indian children in Calcutta. She returned to England to stay in 1945 and in 1968  took the tenancy of Lamb House with her second husband.  She was appointed OBE in 1993 and at age 90  published her 21st novel, Cromartie vs. the God Shiva (1997).  She died the following year.   More on Rumer Godden here  or Wikipedia.

HALL, Radclyffe (1880 – 1943).  Novelist and poet who lived in Rye with her great friend,  Lady Una Troubridge between1928 and 1943; she is the subject of at least four biographies  and is included in Iain Finlayson’s Writers in Romney Marsh (London: Severn Hoouse 1986).    Besides the Mermaid Inn, she lived in various houses including  Santa Maria in West Street, 8 Watchbell Street,  Black Boy (later Charles II Guest House)  in the High Street,  and finallyThe Forecastle in Hucksteps Row, off Church Square, her longest residence.  Her best-known book is the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness (1928). Although the story of her main character was intended as a plea for more tolerant understanding of  ‘inverts’ like herself ,  its only sex scene consists of the words ‘and that night, they were not divided” .Although she had the  support by leading writers of the day, the book was suppressed for obscenity in the UK when it was first published — and has  been famous ever since; it has been translated into at least 14 languages.   Other critically acclaimed works include Adam’s Breed, prize winner and bestseller about an Italian  headwaiter’s search for identity  and meaning (he is a bastard child), amidst an immigrant community and delicious food;  and Unlit Lamp, about a young girl who dreams of becoming a doctor but is trapped by a manipulative mother. 

For Ryers, however, the most interesting of her books by far is The Sixth Beatitude, about  life on Hucksteps Row (named Crofts Lane in the book).   ‘John’ ( as Radclyffe Hall called herself) and Una had first stayed in the cottage at the end of the row in 1928 and in 1934 were able to move into it,  now become a large and picturesque four bedroom period cottage which John renamed Forecastle.  (Paul McCartney owns it now.)   At the time Hucksteps Row was a clutter of some dozen slum cottages –typical rent 2s.6d a week, lived in by fisherfolk including 28 children,  often two families to a cottage, with shared outside toilets and no gardens.   The lives, attitudes and tragedies of dwellers on the row are sensitively depicted in the book and characters — such as ‘the happy-go-lucky  landlord’ — based on real persons;  Forecastle becomes The Look-Out.  See Stories set in and around Rye. 

 HOLLOWAY,  William (1786-1870)  was one of Rye’s most remarkable inhabitants, a voluminous writer on Rye matters.   He moved to Rye at age 35 and became a leader in Rye’s reform movement in the 1820s and latera freeman and jurat.   On the death of his father-in-law he joined the Meryon family brewery – his wife was Sarah Meryon –  but seemed to have no flair for business.  However he did prove to be an indefatigable town historian.     In 1847 he published The History and Antiquities of the Ancient Town and Port of Rye in the County of Sussex with Incidental Notices of the Cinque Ports compiled from manuscripts and original authorities – a tome of over 600 pages. It is still an invaluable source on Rye’s history.  

He was interested in anything to do with the environment (e.g. he was a keen ornithologist) and the welfare of the Rye community.  It was Holloway who undertook to rename Rye streets and number the houses in 1859–to bring order to postal deliveries and town records  On the reverse pages of his brother-in-law’s two volumes of Rye history Some Account of Rye and its Municipal Government  [See Charles MERYON above] he kept what has been published as A Casual Diary where he copied or stuck in materials from newspapers, journals and book-news, everyday occurrences, thoughts –  anything which caught his interest –  all of which add up to incomparable social history.  During the same period he published two series of Antiquarian Rambles through Rye (1863 and 1866). His contemporary, the printer Henry Pocock Clark, asserted that ‘in this town of 5000 inhabitants’ Holloway was ‘the only star of any magnitude shining in [Rye's] hemisphere’.    

HYDE, H. Montgomery (1907 – 1989) was a barrister, politician, biographer and historian specialising in the 1890′s.  A distant cousin of Henry James, he lived at Lamb House 1963 – 1969.    Oxford educated, he worked as an Intelligence Officer in WWII, travelled widely, was  Unionist MP for Belfast North 1950-59 and UK Delegate at the Council of Europe 1952-55. He strenuously opposed the death penalty and censorship laws and paid for his efforts for homosexual law reform within Parliament in the 1950s  with the loss of his political career; the vote was so close it was felt by some he might have carried the day had he been present for the vote.  (Decriminalisation took another ten years.) He held the chair of History and Political science at the University of the Punjab, Lahore  1959-62 and wrote over 50 works on biographical, legal  Irish and espionage subjects.  For example, he wrote extensively on Oscar Wilde and his circle, edited Wilde’s works and published  accounts of the trials of Oscar Wilde, Roger Casement and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  He also wrote  The Love that Dared Not Speak Its Name (1970) and Henry James at Home (1969) about James at Lamb House, where Hyde was living at the time.

IRWIN, Margaret ( d. 1969) Historical novelist and noted authority on Elizabethan and early Stuart England.    She and her husband John Monsell lived at Fir Crest (now Arling House) in Hilly Fields, Rye Hill in the 1940′s.  Her fifteen novels were esteemed for the accuracy of their historial research and the first in a trilogy on Queen Elizabeth, Young Bess, was made into a film starring Jean Simmons. She  wrote passionately about the English Civil War, causing generations to fall in love with the ill-fated but charismatic Earl of Montrose;  The Proud Servant (1949)  is a biographical novel about Montrose, and The Bride, the story of his ill-fated romance with Louise Marie of the Palatinate (1939).  Another favourite with readers is The Gay Galliard (later simply The Galliard):  the story of  Mary Queen of Scots (1941).  

The dust covers of most of her books were provided by her husband,  J R   Monsell, whom she married  in 1929.  He was regarded as one of the best humorous  illustrators  (and authors) for children of the Edwardian period; his edition of Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring was hugely successful, for example and he created a musical version of  Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 18th-century comedy The Rivals.  His sister married Bernard Darwin, see above.)

JAMES, Henry (1843 – 1916)  American born prodigious writer of fiction as well as travel, biography, plays, criticism , hundreds of essays and reviews and regarded as a key figure of literary realism. He  lived in Britain for the last 40 years of  his life , aspired to own Lamb House from 1895, achieved his aim in 1898 and made it his home until the year he died (1916).    He enjoyed showing off the house to his many visitors who included H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, Rudyard Kipling, Ford Maddox (Hueffer) Ford,  G. K. Chesterton  Hilaire Belloc — all of whom lived nearby –as well as Mrs Humphrey Ward and, a particularly good friend, Edith Wharton, to name but a few.    Lamb House is recognisable in The Awkward Age (1898) as the home of Mr. Longdon.   

Son of a wealthy intellectual connected with the leading American thinkers and authors of the day (Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow) and tutored in languages and literature during extensive family travels throughout Europe, he spent the last 40 years of his life in Britain, nearly half of these based in Rye.  Many of his works explore the differences between the old and the new worlds, in particular his early masterpieces Daisy Miller (1879) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), a psychological novel which is his most popular work of long fiction. After the failure of his play Guy Domville in 1895 James began to probe his characters’ consciousness ever more deeply, as in The Spoils of Poynton (1897) and What Maisie Knew (also 1897), an unflinching account of a dysfunctional family.    His most famous short story is the Turn of the Screw (1898), a ghost story full of sexual and psychological ambiguity in which a governess becomes  obsessed with the question of childhood corruption.

Three of the novels written in Rye during the third period of his career are considered his most significant achievements, namely The Wings of the Dove (1902), whose main character is based on a much-loved cousin who died young of TB, The Ambassadors (1903), a dark comedy which James considered his most perfect book,  and The Golden Bowl (1904)  a complex study of marriage and adultery.  All of these, which earned him the title ‘The Master’,  have been the subject of innumerable critical works.

Despite some hostility (in America because he took out British citizenship) and complaints about his complex language, there is no letup in the enormous volume of writing about the man and his works; his books have remained continuously in print, edited, annotated, and studied in schools, colleges and universities around the world,  a major influence on aspiring novelists. Film versions of his novels and stories — for example The Golden Bowl (2000).  The Wings of the Dove (1997), The Turn of the Screw  (1964) and Washington Square (1947) have  been commercially successful and won prestigious awards. Benjamin Britten’s operatic version of The Turn of the Screw (1954) has become one of the composer’s most popular works.

Beyond his fiction, James was one of the more important literary critics in the history of the novel; in his classic essay The Art of Fiction (1884), he argued that a novelist should be allowed  the widest possible freedom in content and approach.  James was also one of the great letter-writers of any era. More than ten thousand of his personal letters are extant, and over three thousand have been published    He was acquainted with many notable literary figures of the day In addition to the those already mentioned as visitors to Rye, these included Robert Browning, Ivan Turgenev, Emile Zola, Lord Alfred Tennyson, and Gustave Flaubert and Robert Louis Stevenson.

The year 2004 has been called ‘the year of Henry James’  because he was at the centre of two major biographical novels (Author, Author by David Lodge and the Booker shortlisted The Master by Colm Toibin), both featuring the aftermath of his disappointing effort to conquer the stage in the 1890s – which included his settling in Rye.  The hero of the actual Booker winner, The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollingshurst,  is writing a thesis on James  One wonders what James would think if he knew how well he is regarded today and that millions of people all over the world have encountered his stories not only on the printed page but in theatrical, cinematic and television adaptations? 

JEAKE, Samuel (1623 – 1690), called the Elder to distinguish him from his son Samuel Jeake the Younger was the grandson of Huguenot immigrants fleeing persecution in France.  He became a freeman of  Rye and its Town Clerk.  He bought the entire collection of borough statutes (for a guinea) and used these to produce The Charters of the Cinque Ports, Two Ancient Towns and their Members. He was a staunch Presbyterian, or Dissenter, which led to the threat of prosecution in 1682 for ‘holding forth’ under the Act of Uniformity introduced after the Restoration of Charles II. Jeake also wrote on mathematics, and made the first recorded use of the terms  addend and proper fraction. The four volumes of his principal mathematical work Logisticelogia, or Arithmetick Surveighed were edited by his son.

JEAKE, Samuel II (1652–1699), writer, astrologer and  polymath was as firm a Presbyterian as his father and he too became a freeman.  However he is more famous for his remarkable and extensive Diaries which are today highly valued as an historical resource.   Though he displayed hardheadedness  as a merchant in wool and hops and as a money-lender and shrewd investor,  somewhat incongruously he used the stars for guidance in such matters as subscribing to the new Bank of England or choosing a wife.  At the age of 29 he married the 13 year old Elizabeth Hartshorne, daughter of the late headmaster of the High Street Grammar School, receiving Hartshorne House on Mermaid Street (later known as the Old Hospital) as part of her dowry. What is now known as Jeake’s House was in fact his wool store., built in 1689 to serve the Romney Marsh sheep trade. 

Jeake’s Diaries  contain  day-by-day accounts of his business dealings and local events, each entry preceded by the astrological symbol for the day. It was not until the 20^th century that his shorthand camouflage when recording personal matters such as his marital relations and quarrels were solved and transcribed.  Among the children of Samuel and Elizabeth Jeake was another Samuel, derided locally as “a Conjuror.” He was reputed to have built a flying machine which unfortunately failed to fly. Rye’s most revered historian, William Holloway, records in the mid 19th century that he had known men who had seen the remains of the machine in the attic of the Grammar School.

end of his own life in 1699 at the age of 47, Samuel II planned to erect a Nonconformist meeting-house next door to his wool store. After his death his widow remarried, and through her daughter Philadelphia their family home, Hartshorne House, descended eventually to the Frewen family, a respected name in Rye. Elizabeth completed the task of building the meetinghouse, and licence for its opening was granted in 1703.

When Conrad Aiken was a London correspondent for the New Yorker, he used Samuel Jeake the |Younger as his pseudonum.

Among the children of Samuel and Elizabeth Jeake was another Samuel, derided locally as “a Conjuror.” He was reputed to have built a flying machine which unfortunately failed to fly. Rye’s most revered historian, William Holloway, records in the mid 19th century that he had known men who had seen the remains of the machine in the attic of the Grammar School.

  n in 1682, Jeake fled to London, where he was joined in hiding by his son and daughter-in-law the following year. The son returned warily to Rye in 1684, but his father did not risk it until James II introduced a more tolerant regime, followed by further relaxation under William and Mary.  He fled to London and remained there for many years.

MERYON,  Dr. Charles Lewis  (1783 – 1877)  Doctor Meryon accompanied Lady Hester Stanhope on her travels in the Middle East and published  The Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope in 1846.  The Meryon family lived in what is now known as The White Vine, later the home of William Hollowa, town historian and his wife Sarah Meryon who was Charles’ sister.  Charles Lewis Meryon researched the history of Rye and his manuscript became the foundation for Holloway’s History of the Town and Port of Rye (1847).  ( This Charles is not to be confused with Charles Pix Meryon who was his nephew and nine times Mayor of Rye.)

MERYON, Dr Edward  (1807 – 1880) was the natural son of John Meryon (one time mayor)  and nephew of Charles Meryon (above).    He became a distinguished and respected doctor, a Vice President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society and a Council member of the Royal College of Physicians.  He did extensive research on muscular dystrophy in the early 1850′s .   It has been argued that the disease should be known as Meryon’s Disease rather than Duchenne’s Disease as his was the earlier work and more significant; the reason given for the lack of recognition is that Duchenne’s work was published in a more prominent journal and thus more widely read.  Other works included The Constitution of Man and History of Medicine (1862).

MILLIGAN, Spike  (Terence Alan Patrick Seán Milligan) KBE  ( 1918–2002),  was an Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor.  Born in India, he spent most of the last two decades of his life in Rye.   During his teens and early twenties he performed as a Jazz musician and was already starting to write comedy sketches–a skill he developed during the Word War II when despite being wounded in action he entertained the troops. His big break into the world of radio as writer and performer came with the now famous Goon Show (1951-1972).   From radio he progressed to numerous TV shows such as The Q Series which is credited as a major influence on the members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

He is also noted as a popular writer of comical verse;  much of his poetry was written for children, including Silly Verse for Kids (1959). and is still taught in schools.   His celebrated war memoirs Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall were taken to the stage very successfully.  Milligan was also a respected actor, a keen painter and environmentalisst and contributed cartoons to Private Eye. Though he suffered from depression, in a 1999 BBC poll he was voted the “funniest person of the last 1000 years”.

Spike Milligan  is  buried in the churchyard of St Thomas Church Winchelsea. The parish authorities  refiused permission to use his chosen epitaph but a compromise was reached : ‘I told you I was ill ‘ appears on his tombstone  in Gaelic.  

RYAN, John (1922-2009), author, illustrator and animator was the creator of Captain Pugwash and other well-loved characters of book and TV.  He lived at Gungarden Cottage near the Ypres Tower with his artist wife Priscilla Blomfield Ryan, a staunch Rye Museum supporter.  Captain Pugwash animated shorts became a long-running BBC series and the Captain Pugwash books are still popular.   There is a Captain Pugwash display in the  Rye Museum where some of his books are for sale.    More  background to the man and his work is available here.   

SAVILLE, Malcolm  (1901 – 1982) grew up in and around Rye and later lived at Chelsea Cottage, Winchelsea.  Although he wrote ovet 90 books, he is best known as an author of children’s series fiction in particular the 20  Lone Pine adventures which have been read by millions of children and gone through many revisions and reprints.   The Gay DolphinAdventure (1945) nd Rye Royal (1969) are set at the Gay Dolphin Hotel on Trader’s Street,, recognisable as the Hope Anchor Hotel on Watchbell Street.  Two others, The Elusive Grasshopper (1951) and Treasure at Amorys (1964) take place near Rye.  A fifth, Saucers over the Moor (1955) , begins in Rye then moves to Shropshire and several others refer to Rye.  The Gay Dolphin was recently voted by the thousand + members of the very active Malcolm Saville Society as the best of the entire series.  A characteristic of Saville’s  fiction for young people is the authenticity of the settings, whether Shropshire, Dartmoor, Suffolk – or East Sussex.  One can take the same walks as his characters (who move around to the different settings) did. Several of his books were seriaised for BBC Radio as well as ITV Children’s drama sries

Among his other books are A Portrait of Rye (2nd ed. 1999) which has been described as ‘the consummationn of a long love affair’.  evoking Rye’s history on a series of walks through its streets and venturing also to nearby towns and villages of interst.  A guidebook, The atory of Winchelsea Church is still available in the church. Mark O’Hanlon’s  biography of Saville, Beyond the Lone Pine was published in 2001 to coincide with the centenary of  Saville’s  birth while The Complete Lone Pine – a guide to the entire series published in 1996  was reprinted in an extended hardback edition in 2005.  Lone Pine and other Saville titles are available in Rye’s Martello Bookshop as well as from the Malcolm Saville Society which for the 4th time is holding its AGM in Rye in April 2011. The Society  publishes four magazines each year and arranges regular events.

TODHUNTER, Isaac (1820-1884)  Son of the first minister of Rye’s  Non-Conformist church (now The Studio) on Watchbell Street, Todhunter became a Cambridge mathematics don. He was also a Latin and Greek scholar, familiar with at least 8 other  languages, and knowledgeable in other fields.   He was a prolific writer of textbooks on mathematical subjects which were widely translated (e.g. into Urdu) and thought to be the most widely used in the world.  He is considered one of the great mathematicians of the 19th century because of his many works on the history of mathematics.

VIDLER, Alec (1899 – 1990).  Born in Rye, son of Leopold Vidler (below), he became a clergyman, later Dean of King’s College Cambridge and after retirement,  Mayor of Rye.    A writer of many books on aspects of religion, including Marriage and Religion, God’s Judgement of Europe, A Variety of Catholic Modernists and the autobiographical Scenes from a Clerical Life.

VIDLER, Leopold (1870 – 1954) was born in Rye,   became Mayor of Rye and a Freeman, and was also the founder and first Curator of Rye Museum. He lived at The Friars of the Sack in Church Square, owned by the family since 1801.   He was the father of Alec Vidler, also a Mayor (see above).  Leopold Vidler wrote A New History of Rye, still the most thorough history of the town.

WARRENDER, Lady Maud (1870 – 1945) Socialite who lived at Leasam on Rye Hill and entertained Edward VII, Edward Elgar, Henry James and E.F.Benson. She wrote an autobiography, My First Sixty Years

WHELPTON, Eric (1894 – 1981) Writer of nearly 30 travel books and guides popular in the 1950′s and ’60′s.   He lived at West Watch in Traders Passage.   At Oxford he had became a close friend of Dorothy Sayers who based her character of Lord Peter Whimsey on him and who later became his literary secretary.  During WWII he was a BBC news correspondent in Europe.  His last two books, The Making of a European (1974) and The Making of an Englishman (1977), are largely autobiographical.  His wife, the painter Barbara Crocker, illustrated some of his books,

The Gun Garden adjacent to the Ypres Tower

Ypres Tower c1885

What we now know as Ypres Tower (13th century)  was the sole defence of Rye   until  Edward III gave successive grants for the building of stone walls and gates.    Even these additional defences were found wanting when the French attacked in 1339 and alarms were frequent in the ensuing years, culminating in the attack of 1377 when Rye was razed to the ground and inhabitants put to the sword.   Whether there was a traitor in the Tower is unknown, but the Mayor and other paid with their lives at the hands of Rye citizens, and this episode marked the end of the Tower’s life as defender of the town.

For the next 50 years it was used by the Corporation for meetings and court sessions and as a prison while a new Town Hall was being built.  Without military value and with the Town Hall completed,  it was sold in 1430 to one Jean de Ypres  on condition the Mayor, Jurats and Commonality could be accommodated there in case of another attack (which never came).

In 1518 the Corporation bought it back again – for £26 — and for the next 300 years  the Tower was used as a prison;  it eventually housed the town mortuary too (that use ceased only in 1956).    Shortly after the purchase of the Tower, the Corporation purchased the land just below it from a private individual and stored its cannon and ammunition there.

Model of 16th century brass cannon

In the days of Good Queen Bess (1533-1603) the Gun Garden was constructed on this land, its wall strengthened, a platform built for the placing of guns and in 1545, for security,  a gate attached to the Ypres Tower (pulled down in 1735).  A great deal of money was spent  on heavy ordnance (some provided by the Crown ) as well as gunpowder and shot.  Thus Rye was an important artillery position at the time of the Spanish Armada when the sea beyond swarmed with hundreds of ships, some of them built and crewed by Ryers.    For their services,  Queen Elizabeth I presented  six beautiful brass guns, long gone.    It is said that other cannon in the Gun Garden at one time were Spanish  — perhaps from one of the many wrecked Spanish ships.

In 1649 however, there was a change of use.  There was now no immediate threat so the Gun Garden became a peaceful bowling green open to residents.   In 1695 it was hired by an individual ‘for coneys to feed on’.  The rabbits were to be delivered to the Corporation, while Rye inhabitants were free to pass over the premises and to play bowls.

Ypres from Fishmarket c 1900

In 1697 stairs were built going down the cliff (those leading to the Ypres Castle pub today).  At this time, of course,  the river below was lined with shipbuilding yards.

• In 1728 the Corporation  took the Gun Garden back and  in 1740 it was being made ready for defence once more;  war with France, Saxony and Bavaria was expected.  The gun platform was improved, there were upper and lower batteries, a house for the Gunner, and barracks.   A lookout shed was built in 1785.

Cinque Ports Volunteer 1803

During the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815). each Cinque Ports raised a corps of volunteers. The Rye Corps drilled in the Gun Garden.

The term ‘Gun Garden’ seems to have once applied to the area all around the Tower—not just to the flat area below the Tower.  Surrounding the Tower over the years there have been  a number of buildings which no longer exist:  houses for the Gaoler and Gunner, for example,  barracks, the Battery building which once housed the Rye Museum, but was destroyed in WW II. . . .

In 1791 the Corporation bought one of the houses (between the present Methodist Church and the steps down to the Gun Garden)  and turned it into a Workhouse, extended by the purchase of the Dolphin Inn and serving until 1844 when new legislation led to a larger workhouse for the entire area up Rye Hill. Also in the 1790s in the face of population increase and inflation there was an attempt to make workhouse administration more efficient and less costly.   A manufactory was built just below the Gun Garden on ‘Factory Marsh’ where the poor (who already did much oakum picking) made hop bags and sacking.  This was not a success and the factory was closed three years later.

In 1819 a crowd of 60,000 – 80,000 gathered in Manchester  to demand reform of parliamentary representation.   Cavalry charged  and there were deaths and many injuries (dubbed the Peterloo Massacre) – and subsequently, a crackdown  on reform from a panicked government.   Rye was ordered to send its cannons and ammunition to London; the platforms were left with empty sockets.   (This was not the last time Rye cannons left the Gun Gardens;  even in World War II  some were melted down.

Preparing for Prize Firing Day c1873

Guns came back however.  A series of ‘war scares’ began in 1859 and led to a revival of the volunteer movement in Rye;   it became a popular pastime for those with a taste for military life and there were various groups and names (e.g.  the Rye District Rifle Company).   Between 1862 and 1876 (when it was disbanded) the Rye Military Artillery Corps  used the Gun Garden Battery for their gun drills twice each week and hosted a yearly event known as Prize Firing Day.   This became one of Rye’s chief gala days. All the Cinque Ports companies sent teams and the old Battery under the Ypres Tower reverberated to the roar of seven 8-pounders which had a range of 1300 yards.  Special trains brought onlookers, there was a grand march past and a presentation of prizes .  In later years men trained in the variously named volunteer corps served in the Boer War and World War I.

There have been other uses of the Gun Garden.  In 1870 a Soup Kitchen was built against the Ypres Tower (where the old gate had been)  and the town’s poor came here for food.. It was considered an eyesore by the local Association for the Preservation of Our Ancient Buildings who in 1890 insisted that it be demolished and moved to Cinque Ports Street.

Gun Garden c1920

In 1881 the guns were fired for the Duchess of Kent’s funeral.    In 1918 after the armistice was signed, the Corporation accepted  two captured German guns from the War Trophies Committee for Gungarden.

In 1925 the Gun Garden  was purchased from the War Department by the Rye Corporation; the area south of the Ypres Tower was thrown open to the public as a pleasant haven and a place from which to admire views of the surrounding country.  From 1928 Battery House, the building to the north of the Ypres Tower,  was used as the town museum.

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Gun Garden after Raid Sept. 1942

However, on 22 September 1942 it and the adjoining buildings were badly damaged in an air raid– and the Tower losts its pyramidal roof.

In 1980 Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and  first lady Warden of Cinque Ports visited Rye.  There were by now no guns,  so to honour her visit Ryers raised money and the local foundry and woodworkers made replicas and presented them to the Queen Mother – for Rye’s Gun Garden.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Gun Garden Leisure Grounds

In the 1950s and 1960s the Gun Garden sported flower beds and deck chairs.   It is still a popular place for Ryers and visitors to meet and look out to the Marsh, the boats on the river,  and further, to Rye Harbour and the Channel.

View to east

Jean Floyd

The Curse of Rye

If anyone were to say Rye is a drunken town, we would stoutly maintain it was false.  Of habitual drunkards we have a few and though there are too many Public Houses, both for the sake of the trade and their customers, they are excellently managed on the whole.  Nevertheless, it is DRINK  more than anything else which demoralises our people; not a despicable and bestial indulgence in Drunkenness, but an awfully dangerous liquor at frequent intervals during the day, and imbibing far more than is good for health or brain.

We have all of us seen the disastrous effects of this sinful habit on some of the Ryers of the past ; we are not blind to what is going on at the present moment, as we sadly have to watch both old and young – some of our very best – gradually become slaves to the fatal indulgence.

For the love of this old town, and in the hope of encouraging all who love Rye to do their best to combat this growing evil in our midst, we have determined ourselves to become abstainers for a year, and earnestly ask the cooperation of all for a united stand against the besetting sin of the town.

See also Inns, Tipplings and Alehouses of  Rye

For the main Benson articles click here.

This recipe was contributed by E F Benson, Mayor of Rye to the book A Cargo of Recipes: 

Procure a small piece of glass (any broken window will serve) about 1 inch square. Pound this in a mortar till its consistency is of the finest dust, and thoroughly mix it with 6 or 8 times the amount of sifted sugar.  Take 3 berries of deadly nightshade (belladonna). Mince well and add one ¼ oz of foxglove (digitalis), a dessertspoonful of weed killer (arsenic) and mix together in sufficient jam or honey to neutralise the taste of the other ingredients. Spread this mixture over the surface of an ordinary pancake, roll it up in the usual manner, and sprinkle thickly on the top the powered glass and sugar. Pass a salamander over it till the glass and sugar assumes the appearance and texture of caramel.

NB  Digitalis and belladonna may be procured from any chemist, but they are not always fresh, and it is wiser for this and other reasons to pick these ingredients yourself. It is also advisable, when serving an enemy with this delicious dish, to explain that you never eat sweets yourself, but that this pancake is prepared according to an old family recipe.

MORE WRITERS WHO LIVED IN AND AROUND RYE
(e.g. Winchelsea, Fairlight, Pett, Hastings, Romney Marsh)

BURNETT,  Francis Hodgson (Great Maytham Hall, Rolvenden
CLARK, Kenneth,  art historian   (Saltwood, Kent)
CONRAD, Joseph (Winchelsea, Kent)
COWARD, Noel  (St Mary in the Marsh, Adlington)
CRANE, Stephen  (Brede_ii
FORD, Ford  Madox [formerly [Hueffer]  (Winchelsea, Kent)
FORESTER< C.S.  (Winchelsea)
GREY OWL  (Hastings)
NESBIT, Edith  (St Mary in the Marsh)
PATMORE, Coventry  (Hastings)
RICHARDSON, Henry Handel  (Fairlight)
TRESSELL, Robert  (Hastings)

WRITER VISITORS TO RYE
Many of whom wrote about Rye

BELLOC, Hilaire
BROOKE, Rupert
BYATT, A.S.
CHESTERTON,  G
CHURCH, Richard
COBBETT,  William
COLLINS, Wilkie
DEFOE,  Daniel
DODGSON, Charles (Lewis Carroll)
ELIOT, T.S.
FIENNES Celia
HUNT, Wray
KAYE, M.M.
KAYE-SMITH, Sheila
KING, Clive
KIPLING,  Rudyard
LEAR, Edward
MOORE, Patrick
SILLITOE, Alan
THACKERAY, William
THEROUX, Paul
WARD, Mrs Montgomery
WELLINGTON, Arthur Wellesley , Duke of
WELLS, H G
WHARTON, Edith

And finally, a quick list of RYE HISTORIANS

BAGLEY, Geoffrey
CLARK, Henry Pocock
CLARK, Kenneth
COLLARD, John
DICKINSON, Alan
EWART, Cyril
EWART, Peter
HOLLOWAY,  William
KIRKHAM, Jo
PALMER, Frank
VIDLER,  Leopold

Arrangement is roughly in order of reader ages from nursery to adult. The date are those of  first publication.  Some have gone through many editions/revisions/reprintings since.

Rumer Godden,  A KINDLE OF KITTENS.  Pan MacMillan Children’s Books 1978.
Both the words and the illustrations by Lynne Byrnes put the streets,  roofs, cats and townspeople of Rye between the covers.  The Town Hall and Town Crier, the Mermaid Inn, Lamb House, the corner of Market and Pump Streets, a poet in jeans, old ladies and rude boys—they are all endearingly shown as stray garbage-eating tabby She-Cat goes about finding suitable homes for her kindle of kittens.

Beatrix Potter, THE TALE OF THE FAITHFUL  DOVE.  Warne 1956.
Robin Hill on Mermaid Street forms the basis and front cover design of this story.   The tale is of a pigeon trapped in a chimney  who is kept company by dancing mice dressed in lace. Devoted mate Mr. Tidler stands by until she is freed with her newly hatched son.    Beatrix Potter used to visit, artist Mabel Attwell  here.  Though written in 1907 for her publisher’s children it was not published until many years later. 

John Ryan, MURDER IN THE CHURCHYARD: the story of Rye’s most infamous crime retold in pictures.  Rye: Gungarden Books, 1997.
The creator of the Captain Pugwash books and films records his impressions in words and his inimitable drawings of how it came about that John Breeds,  ‘sanguinary butcher’  murdered Alan Grebell in the Rye churchyard on a dark night in    ,  thinking he was Mayor James Lamb.  The author  lived at Rye’s Gungarden across from the church and used to walk his dog each night around  the scene of the murder.

John Ryan, CAPTAIN PUGWASH AND THE HUGE REWARD: a tale of smuggling in the ancient town of Sinkport for children of all ages.  Rye: Gungarden Books, 1991.
Those who know Rye Sinkport) will recognise its streets and buildings in the charming illustrations though they have acquired wonderfully inventive new names:  Barmaid Street, Mutton House.,  Witchball  Street, Baddie’s Tower, the Sand Gate, Soap Walk  Least Street, the Gingarden, the Jolly Jailer  . .  A sheer delight for all ages.

Clive King, THE TOWN THAT WENT SOUTH.  London: Hamish Hamilton,  1959. Also Puffin Books. While teaching in Rye,  Clive King produced two of his best-loved books, the second being his most famous:  the children’s classic and TV favourite Stig of the Dump  (boy discovers a Stone Age cave-dweller in  a disused Kent chalk pit),  The earlier Town That Went South  is set in Ramsly (Rye) whose people wake one day to find that their town has come adrift and is floating gently across to France – Town Hall, gasworks,  Gargoyle the cat, the ladies of Church Square, children of Ropewalk Street, vicar and all.   It continues to float south, to Africa and the South Seas, Australia and on, Ramslyers disappearing along the way, except for  Gargoyle who becomes the first cat to reach the South Pole. 

Richard Church, THE BELLS OF RYE London: Heinemann, 1960.   This exciting and colourful adventure story is set in Rye in the 1370s when the French attacked and burned Rye and carried off its church bells and the men (and some boys) of Rye and Winchelsea reciprocated in the following year. John Finch the boy hero lives on Watchbell Street. He and a sharp-witted hunchback foil a traitor’s ambush by stowing away on one of the avenging ships.   Actual events and characters of the time form the background of the story: a good introduction for youngsters to a key episode in Rye’s history. 

Monica Edwards.   The Romney Marsh series       The series includes 15 titles most of which are in print and others scheduled for reprinting. They appeal to nostalgic adults as well as children. 

WISH FOR A PONY is the first book.    Set in Westling (Rye Harbour), as well as Dunsford (Rye) and Winkelsea (Winchelsea), the stories feature many real-life characters (with changed names), e.g.  Edwards’ father who conducted the mass funeral for those lost in the Mary Stanford disaster, in STORM AHEAD .  The author had known all 17 crew members and took part in the attempted rescue.    Her storytelling is considered superior to most of the published authors for children of the time because they are ‘stories of real children’; the activities of her family and their friends both young and adult provided much of the realism.   Her heroines take cover as bullets fly and patch up an injured fisherman (CARGO OF HORSES), ‘borrow’ a car and drive underage (THE WHITE RIDERS) and get involved in smuggling (THE SUMMER OF THE GREAT SECRET and NO GOING BACK).  Other key titles include OPERATION SEABIRD, STRANGERS TO THE MARSH and A WIND IS BLOWING.

Her second series is based on a later residence at PunchBowl Farm, Surrey.  Monica Edwards also wrote for BBC Children’s Hour and the story for the  Children’s Film Foundation film Dawn Killer, set on Romney Marsh and shown as a serial in cinemas across Britain.  The later book version was called KILLER DOG.    

More details at the Monica Edwards Appreciation Society website    or in the Monica Edwards Romney Marsh. Companion (2006) or the authorised biography (2010), both by Brian Parks and published by Girls Gone By.  There is also a magazine, the Martello.   Martello Bookshop in Rye stocks many of the titles. 

Malcolm Saville.   GAY DOLPHIN ADVENTURE and RYE ROYAL  are based at the Gay Dolphin hotel which Ryers know as the Hope Anchor.   Millions of children have read the 20 Lone Pine books and the Malcolm Saville Society, with  well  over 1000 members, holds frequent events in the places where the stories are set – Rye, for example.     The walks taken by the book characters can be undertaken by readers.  The stories feature realistic characters with distinctive personalities moving in real locations and  encountering plenty of danger calling for ingenuity and  bravery.  They grow up during the series.  Here are the four set in and around Rye; they have gone through many editions and reprints, with a variety of publishers.

GAY DOLPHIN ADVENTURE 1945,    most popular and best selling of the entire series. it was serialised on BBC Children’s Hour.    It begins with Jon and his cousin Penny coming to the Gay Dolphin (Hope Anchor) Hotel in Rye which Jon’s widowed mother will now run.  Ingredients  are a secret smugglers’ room with an ancient map, clues to treasure, an odd lady artist, a sinister hotel manager,  a visiting family including smart young twins who join forces to explore a secret passage,  share a lucky escape from a savage storm at Winchelsea Beach  and help solve the various mysteries.

RYE ROYAL.  1969.   Jon and Penny’s friends the Mortons come to Rye to stay with elderly Mrs Flowerdew who lives next to the Gay Dolphin Hotel   There is a secret,  a disappearance, an antiquarian bookseller who is not what he at first seems . . .  The Lone Piners rescue the impoverished widow  from her evil captors and find for her an important  treasure.

THE ELUSIVE GRASSHOPPER.  1951. Wicked Miss Ballanger and ‘Slinky’ Grandon are working together again and an adult friend of the  Lone Piners is found unconscious in a deserted school house with a crude illustration of a grasshopper. The boys achieve the rescue of their friend and the girls discover the secret of the Bogus Bird Watcher while the youngest,  the twins, discover the secret of the elusi9ve grasshopper.

TREASURE AT AMORYS  1964   Amorys is a farmhouse on the Isle of Oxney where Roman artefacts have been found.   The old enemy Miss Ballinger must be outwitted once again and there are discoveries — a Roman Mithraic temple for example.

There is much more information on the Malcolm Saville Society website and in Mark O’Hanlon’s The Complete Lone Pine, 2nd ed. 2005.

Wray Hunt,  THE MAYOR OF RYE 1932 now a rare collectors’ item.   The story takes place at the end of  the Middle Ages  and tells of  Walter, thought to be ‘a witch’s brat’ in a community of fisher folk, who after many advantures among traders and pirates, rogues and vagabonds, merchants and seafarers, and with the help of Philippa, becomes not only a freemanof Rye , but its Mayor.

Russell Thorndike,  DOCTOR SYN 1915, republished 1998.   It is set around the turn of the 18th century in Dymchurch and Romney Marsh and tells the story of the genial. kindly well-loved Vicar of Dymchurch, who sometimes breaks into the ungodly vavourite song of the notorious pirate  Captain Clegg ==though Clegg had been hanged as a pirate ten years before — so it was said. And who is the Scarecrow, leader of the smugglers’ gang?  An unusual story with plenty of mystery and ‘atmosphere’. 

The author was the actor and writer Russell Thorndike, brother of the actress Dame Sybil Thorndike.   While the Thorndikes were touring the USA with a theatrical company, a murder took place outside their hotel. The body was left all night on the street below their window. Unable to sleep, they passed the time by telling stories. The character of Doctor Syn is said to have been created that night. The Thorndikes knew Dymchurch well and were frequent visitors. Russell lived in several different houses in the village, and was often to be found in the Ship Inn, which is featured prominently in the novel.  h was the popularity of the original novel that Thorndike went on to write six others but these had to be prequels as he had killed off Dr Syn in the original book.   .

John Christopher, EMPTY WORLD.   1977. Penguin Books  1990.
This post-apocalyptic novel for teenagers is a chilling story, but readers find it compulsive.  Neil has lost his family in an accident and comes to Winchelsea to live with his grandmother – but  when a virulent plague sweeps  the world, dealing death to nearly every one it touches, he must battle alone, not just for physical survival  but also to overcome fear and loneliness.   A film is currently being produced of the book. Another film version is currently being made of Christopher’s trilogy The Tripods as well.   This was partly filmed in Rye near the Paul Nash house at the top of  East Street where the author lived at the time.

 William Thackeray,  DENIS DUVAL 1864.     The hero of Thackeray’s last (and unfinished) novel lives in Winchelsea with his  Huguenot grandparents and attends a ‘famous good school’ named Pocock in Rye  where he lodges with a grocer (and his daughter who is fond of drink) The grocer is part owner of a ‘fishing boat’ and the story contains more than a whiff of smuggling and other unlawful activities.   Thackeray’s notebooks show that he did a great deal of research in the British Library on local history of Sussex and the naval service before writing the book.   The Weston brothers,  highwaymen masked as respectable citizens of Winchelsea, are among the characters developed from this research.   The book is a satisfying love story as well.  It was being serialised in the Cornhill Magazine )of whih Thackeray was editor) when he died in 1963Russell Thorndike, DOCTOR SYN   Romney Bookshop, 1915.    Set around the turn of the 18th century this tells the story of the Vicar of Dymchurch, who was once the notorious pirate Captain Clegg and now leads a secret life as the Scarecrow, head of a gang of smugglers. The author was the actor and writer Russell Thorndike, brother of the actress Dame Sybil Thorndike.  The story was so popular that Thorndike had to write  prequels because he had killed off his hero but readers wanted more!

Coming next: 

A.S. Byatt, THE CHILDREN’S STORY.   Set on Romney Marsh and based on the life of Edith Nesbitt.  Shortlisted for the Booker in 2009

. . . and more

For ezample,  did you know that a garden near Rye was the inspiration for Frances Hodgson Burnett’s THE SECRET GARDEN?   This  favourite story may be set  in Yorkshire but that is not where the inspiration for the garden came from.    From the mid-1890s Burnett  lived in England at Great Maytham Hall near Rolvenden. The Hall resembled a feudal manor house and there was a series of walled gardens; she wrote several books in the rose garden.   (She needed the income from her writing because she led an extravagant and unconventional lifestyle).  THE LITTLE PRINCESS (1905) was one of the books.   And here began the idea for THE SECRET GARDEN.  It was published in 1911, after she had returned to the United States to live permanently.

Keep scrolling down as there is lots to see.   cNews Flash

Success!  St Mary’s Ledgers Saved for Rye!! 

Receiving the ledgers

 Rye Castle Museum and St Mary’s Parish Church are delighted to announce that they were able to jointly secure at a recent auction, four St. Mary’s Church Ledgers from the mid 19th Century. They were kept by the Dengate family three of whose members were Sextons during the period 1829-54. The Ledgers provide a remarkable primary source of information on the people of Rye and of the practices of a Sexton at that time. They end with the last burial in Rye Churchyard in 1854.  They also provide information on tragedies in the area, as there are entries for sailors and fishermen who perished at sea. Also interesting are the entries for the deaths and burials of national figures, such as George IV.     

The photograph shows Jo Kirkham (Chairman, Rye Museum Association), Sheila Ovens (Church Warden), Canon David Frost (St. Mary’s Team Rector), Shelley Jebb (Church Warden) and Jenny Lee (Parochial Church Council) all admiring the Ledgers.    

Click here for the full story and more photos.    

Family/House/Local History

 Do you need help with your investigations?   Click on Rye Castle Museum –> Local History Research at right to find out what to do   

Recent and Coming Events 

Rye Museum Junior Archaeologist

Coffee Morning Special Guest

Eight year old amateur archaeologist Erinn Streeton was made an Honorary Member of Rye Castle Museum at the 13th November Coffee Morning in recognition of the discoveries  she has been making on her family’s allotment – once under the sea of course.     She has been bringing her finds (and those of neighbouring allotment holders) into the Museum for help in identification.   The first item she brought was a button which was found to be from an early 19th century Exciseman’s jacket. 

In the most recent bag was a tiny doll’s head which proved to be an exact match for several fully dressed dolls inn the Museum’s collection.    Jo Kirkham, Chairman of the Rye Museum Association, presented Erinn with her membership card.   

Talks

The Talks Programme got off to a great start on Tuesday 12th October when a capacity crowd learned more about researching houses and their occupants from  Peter Ewart.   Doug Lindsay’s story of the Kent and East Sussex Railway also brought a full house and proved equally fascinating.   Click here for the full 2010-2011 programme and get out your diary!    And we’ve also had another of our popular Coffee Mornings.   There is one more for November:   

27th November: Craft Fair:  East Street Museum 10:30 – 4 p.m.
All the tables are now booked for this popular event.   Besides the displays and Christmas gifts for sale there will be mince pies. mulled wine and more. As many know, this is a good place to find that special present for Christmas.  

December Events

4th December: Christmas Coffee Morning: East Street 10:30-12:00
Free entry to the museum (closed in general for the winter), excellent cafetiere, free trade organic coffee, organic and free trade tea, cake and some wonderful stalls.  We are also known for our book stall, our cakes and savourites and intersting bric a brac.   Our Coffee mornings attract a good number of  interesting visitors to Rye as well as regulars.  Do come and bring your friends. 

11th December:  The Grotto and Father Christmas: East Street Museum
 This year Rye’s Christmas events will be spread over two or three dates to enable Ryers and visitors to take in more of them.  Details coming very shortly.  Whichever the date,  Santa will be there with presents for the children.  

14th December: Talks Programme: ‘Chedworth Roman Villa’: East Street Museum 7:30
Chris Cleere will tell us how the National Trust is preserving and displaying its oldest Country House for the new millenium. A fascinating insight by one who was involved in the project. 

Other News

• Read about Rye Museum’s  Young Archaeologist below.
• There was a great turnout for our Volunteers Evening on Tuesday October 26th: new recruits, fresh ideas and a general buzz.  If you weren’t able to be there and would like to join our growing band of volunteers, see the note below under On Being a Volunteer and get in touch with the Volunteer Co-Ordinate, Martin Riddell by post or email info@ryemuseum.co.uk.    There are many ways to be involved!   For example, the Museum is trying to build up a database about Rye families as we get frequent requests from around the world from former residents and descendents of residents for information about people, houses and events in Rye’s  past. 
• Women’s Tower Project:   We still heed your support!   Give yourself  the satisfaction of knowing you have helped to save a special building of our town so it can not only be used by Ryers but also provide yet another attraction for visitors  Read  the Update below. 
• Rye has a new and very professional website www.ryesussex.co.uk which will soon take over the existing  Visit Rye site  as well.   There’s a lovely series of  photos of Rye on the home page.  
• Exploring Rye with Brian Hargreaves  is still selling fast.   It is available at both sites as well as in town.  It includes nearly 100 of Brian’s splendid drawings of Rye buildings and details.  Price:  £5.50

Reminder about Opening Hours

• The Ypres Tower will be open all day 7 days a week throughout the winter.   The extended opening hours have been so successful we are continuing to open  7 days a week including lunch hours   but with a slightly shorter day:  10:30 – 3:30 (Last entry 3:00)   If you haven’t visited the Tower lately, do.  Among the new thiings to see is the Tower   Rye Tower Embroidery, an informative (and amusing) history of the castle commissioned as part of the Ypres Tower bid for Lottery money  and created by 20 members of the Rye Stitchers over the last four years   It’s a splendid piece of work worth a special visit/revisit to the Tower.       
• The East Street Museum is closed for the winter as of 1st November–except for pre-booked parties and special events.  Please contact the Museum: 01797 226728, or info@ryemuseum.co.uk   if you wish to bring a group.  

What is at our Ypres Tower site?

Tower Embroidery

 The splendid new addition of the Rye Tower Embroidery now holds pride of place above the ground floor fireplace.  Also on the ground floor are cells once used for prisoners: one still reminds visitors of  the stark conditions endured by prisoners but another now displays  Rye pottery and a third has become a Still Room with herbs and spices from the Middle Ages (complementing  the Medieval herb garden in the old exercise yard).       

Choose your helmet!

In the dungeon there is a display of Arms and Armour, with elmets to try on, and swords to try and wield.  There and on the ground floor are various games and activities for younger visitors.      

On the first floor there are beautifully sewn scenes of Rye: the Millennium Embroidery as well as  a relief map of the surrounding  countryside over the centuries and a map showing the scores of shipwrecks off our coast.    From here you can go onto the lookout, designed for looking out for the enemy!  You can look down onto the Medieval Herb  Garden which you can visit later, and across to the Women’s Tower which we are currently raising funds to repair so it can house more of our exhibits.   Built to keep the women and children prisoners when they were separated from the men in 1837, it is thought this may be the only such prison left in the country.          

For more on our two sites, click on Museum Sites at right.            

On being a Volunteer

Far from being onerous,  stewarding  offers a chance to meet  interesting visitors and become better acquainted yourself with our exhibits and Rye’s history,  so if you would be willing to help out,  Volunteer Co-ordinator Martin Riddell would be happy to hear from you  info@ryemuseum.co.uk or ring 01797 -226728. You may also want to ask about other ways to help, for example by joining the Rye Muses who organise events which help raise funds, or the Education Committee, or the Gardening group or . . . . .  The full list of possibilities is quite long!         

Rye Museum Website   

There are now well some  115 articles and some improvements to design and navigation.      Click on any of the Local History headings for example,  and you will be taken to a page headed by a list of subtopics already available.    The newest will always be on top.   There’s much more to come of  come of course,  so be sure to visit– and revisit.    Sample the lot, or click on a heading  that interests you.     If you have writing/editing/web  talents or information on some aspect of Rye’s history you would be willing to share, please let us know!  jlfloydeltc@gmail.com             

We are 100 years away from Edwardian Rye.   One new ‘post’ on the site will give you  an idea of the changes in Rye since then,,  Click here to see it.          

Publications

The list of Museum books, booklets, maps, postcards and DVDs has recently been added to the site.  Click here to see it.   We are not at present able to provide a postal service, but the full range of titles is available at the East Street site and our topsellers at the Ypres Tower.   Note that we have added Captain Pugwash titles to our stock.  Click here for titles and prices.   Scroll down for more Book News.            

Book News

Exploring Rye with Brian Hargreaves  is now available at both museum sites.  Nearly 100 precisioned line drawings of Rye buildings and details!  Price:  £5.50.         

Do you have your copy of  Rye in World War II?  This was the subject of  Jo Kirkham’s Address at the 2009 Remembrance Day Service at St Mary’s Church, Rye.   Following requests from a number of people for a printed version of the address,  an illustrated booklet  is now available at £3.50.             

Copies may  be purchased at the Rye Heritage Cente  or  at either of the Museum sites.   All proceeds will go to the Women’ s  Tower Project so that this part of Ypres Tower, home of the Rye Museum, can be restored and re-roofed  and brought into active use.         

New looks at Rye       

A lovely little book for all Ryers:  John Griffiths’  Shapes, Colours and Materials: a look at buildings in Rye, Rye Conservation Society. £6.99.   Buying through the Museum helps the Museum!              

Do you have these yet?       

These both deal with Rye before 1660–the result of years of research, deliberately complementary,  must-haves for anyone seriously interested in Rye’s history.  Both available from Martello Bookshop–or ask at the Rye Library            

Gillian Draper, Rye: A  History of a Sussex Cinque Port to 1660, Chichester: Phillimore, 2009           

David and Barbara Martin, Rye Rebuilt: Regeneration and Decline Within a Sussex Port Town, 1350-1660. Romney Marsh Research Trust, 2009