by Allan Downend, slightly adapted from the booklet An Introduction to Rye Castle Museum ( 1999) with some additional information from Geoffrey S Bagley and Kenneth M Clark The Story of the Ypres Tower and Rye Museum (1975).

Ypres Tower, painting by Borrow

The idea of using Rye’s former jail (the Ypres Tower) as a museum was first mooted in 1889 by the Rye Literary Society but it was to be another forty years before a Rye Museum was established and sixty-five before  the Ypres Tower became its home.    

It was Leopold Vidler, author of A New History of Rye (1934) , who managed to establish the first  Museum in Battery House, just north of the Ypres Tower during his time as Mayor of Rye (1927 – 28).  The building had been purchased by Rye Council in 1925 from the War Office and it was let for use as a museum at £26 a year.   Leopold Vidler was its first and only curator and entrance fees were fixed at 6d for adults and 2d  a head for parties of not less than twelve persons.  Like the current Museum it was entirely self-supporting and had to rely on visitors, volunteers and fund-raising for its continuation and development.

With the outbreak of war in 1939 the Museum’s most valuable items were placed in temporary  storage around the town and in 1940 it was closed.

On September 22nd  1942 Battery House, and the adjoining property was  severely damaged in an air raid; at the same time the Ypres Tower lost its pyramidal tile roof .   Battery House was declared unsafe and the undamaged items still housed there were removed to safer repositories including the Ypres Tower.   At the end of the war all the salvaged exhibits and cases were moved to a Corporation garage,  there to remain until 1953.

To celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953,  Geoffrey Spink Bagley and Wally Cole of the Rotary Club of Rye and Winchelsea set up an historical exhibition featuring hitherto unseen and forgotten exhibits and reminding people of the museum’s collection.   It was decided to re-establish Rye’s Museum.

The survivors of the pre-war committee, plus ‘new blood’, set about finding new premises.  Geoffrey Spink Bagley took a leading role in this movement and became Honorary Curator after the death of Leopold Vidler in October 1954.  He held the post until his death in 1992, a period of thirty-eight years.   It was decided to house the Museum in the Ypres Tower which was now empty except for the mortuary in the basement.   Repairs carried out under War Damage provision had made it  habitable.    The newly re-formed Museum Association took a lease from the Council for the ground and first floors but the financial resources immediately available amounted to  £6 — the balance still standing to the credit of the old Museum Committee., Thus all the help in setting up the  Museum came from volunteers and donors of  fittings and equipment.     From this  seemingly amateurish start the Museum opened at Easter 1954 and  has continued to develop thanks to further bands of volunteers ever since.

Geoffrey Spink Bagley great enlarged  and enhanced the Collection and wrote extensively about Rye and the surrounding area.  With a team of volunteers he changed some of the displays each year and in 1975 the museum won an Award for its work and displays.  The emphasis was still on local history but the catchment area was widened to include Romney Marsh and the villages surrounding Rye.

In 1992 Margaret Bird becane Honorary Curator and realised that the damp conditions in the Tower that had begun to arise during the 1980s were beginning to affect the Collection.  She initiated the process that led to the Museum acquiring 3 East Street and then the development of a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for the money to convert that building into a Museum;  It had been a bottling factory for beers etc. and was llinked to the property  known as  Gill’s Loft and  Help the Aged  (now Age UK ,  the new name for Age Concern and Help the Aged) in the High Street where the beer was originally sold.  By the time the Museum Association bought the building the shop had been sold as a separate property and the old factory was in considerable disrepair.

Ypres Tower today (drawing by Brian Hargreaves)

Recent visitors to both the Ypres Tower and East Street sites will know that there have been many additions and improvements over the last decade, the details of which can be found on other parts of this website .  And once again we are appealing for help in raising  funds for building restoration, this time for the Women’s Tower, once used to house women prisoners.   (Click on Museum Sites and Latest News at right.)

This was the subtitle of a 1973 Down Rye Way column  by the then editor of Rye’s Own, Christopher Davson.  And as you will see from what follows,  Geoffrey Bagley really was  ‘extraordinary’.        The article  begins:    

‘ It was with some trepidation that your reporter stepped aside from Church Square into one of Rye’s many secret corners  [the Bagley home] to offer, on behalf of Rye’s Own   and its readers, respectful congratulations to our Honorary Freeman designate.  Geoffrey Bagley will be the only living Freeman of the Town, and the first to receive this rare honour for 15 years.  And was he not also a former Mayor, Baron and Speaker of the Cinque Ports Confederation, County Councillor, Honorary Curator of  Rye Museum . . . .  [and he might have added prolific author on aspects of Rye, cofounder of the Rye Society of Artists, and much more]. ‘    

The article goes on to summarise the many achievements of Geoffrey Bagley’s pre-Rye days (see the article by Rosemary Bagley below) and then reports that, wanting to concentrate full time on his painting,  he  ‘chose Rye as a nice quiet place for an artist to settle down and paint in’  and ends with a story which might make  Ryers lament still  more that he is no longer with us:    

‘ Well, he has settled down, and the annual Royal Society of Artists exhibition at the F.E. Centre proves to us that [despite all his other activities] he still paints.  But some people do not have it in them to stay quiet!  After only about 5 years Bagley rose up in wrath.  The then Vicar of Rye and the Rye Town Council wished to place the tombstones around the churchyard walls of St Mary’s and have mown grass.  To oppose this a committee was formed on which Geoffrey served; the plan was defeated.  Geoffrey was then asked if he would be willing to stand for Rye Town Council.  He agreed and was duly elected .  

The Churchyard was saved, but Bagley was launched on a new public career from which he could not turn back as there were other threats to Rye.    He moved on from the  Rye Planning Committee and three happy and popular years as Mayor  to East Sussex County Council on which he served for 12 years, much of them as Chairman of the County Records Committee. And he saw to it, there, that the County Planning Officers treated Rye with proper respect and indeed love. ‘  

Rosemary Bagley provided a more detailed account of the multiple impressive careers of husband Geoffrey Bagley in a 2002 Rye’s Own article (No 144, January 2002). It is slightly adapted here, with one of the line drawings by GSB which accompanied it.    

Geoffrey Spink Bagley 1901- 1992

 Beginnings 

Geoffrey  Spink Bagley was born on 3rd November 1901 at Pontefract, Yorkshire, the son of architect Frank Spink Bagley and his wife Elizabeth Husband.  The family interests ranged from industry and glassware to locomotives.  After Wakefield Grammar School, Geoffrey began architectural training but soon transferred to the Nottingham School  of Fine Art, and in 1924 moved to London to share a studio with Bernard Hailstone who was to become a well-known  portrait painter and wartime artist.  After a precarious free-lance existence as a commercial artist with exciting periods of poster  design and book illustration he was offered a job with Batten Ltd, engravers, the Toronto  design specialists.  This led to association with the then internationally known ‘Group of Seven’ and the opportunity to improve his painting skills with gifted artists.  The varied Canadian scenes (French Canada, Labrador Coast and the sub-Arctic) provided plenty of material for his work.   

Geoffrey  Bagley as Canadian Artist 

In 1934 he became Art Director of a famous firm of fine-paper manufacturers, Howard Smith Paper Mills Ltd. in Montreal– they supplied the paper for Canadian bank notes –and he became more involved with typography and printing design.  He quickly began to win awards and by 1939 his work was being shown in Chicago, New York, the National Gallery of Canada and elsewhere.    With the outbreak of World War II he became Staff Artist to the Canadian government’s Wartime Information Board, producing posters for propaganda purposes and for recruitment to the Royal Canadian Navy.  Later he was appointed to the National Film Board of Canada as Art Director of their Graphics Division.  During the war period he also recoreded life on the North Atlantic Convoys for the Canadian Navy.  A large collection of his work 1939-45 including paintings, drawings and documentation was donated  to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa in 1985, the 75th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Navy..    

Geoffrey Bagley as Artist of Rye  

The Courtyard, The Mermaid Inn, by Geoffrey Spink Bagley

While seconded to the Royal Canadian Navy as an official War Artist, there were opportunities to visit England to compare notes with his opposite numbers in the Crown Film Unit of the war-time Ministry of Information — and these probably influenced his decision to  return to live in England.  He settled in Rye in 1948, to pursue ‘straight’ painting, lithography and drawing. He explored the area, discovering Romney Marsh with its ever-changing light and fascinating collections of churches which he painted many times.  These paintings show his appreciation of church architecture and skill as a draughtsman.  He loved Dungeness with its collection of boats, shacks, various forms of habitation and flotsam and jetsam on the beach.  He had a particular love of the sea and everything connected with it.    

His other love was Scotland with its mountains and locks and he spent many painting holidays amongst this varied scenery.  And he was still pursuing special interests in the study of rococo art and architecture in Germany, Austria, France and northern Italy.   

Geoffrey Bagley and the Rye Society of Artists  

Geoffrey had by now become acquainted with Wally Cole and Leslie Davie and a number of other talented Rye artists.  In 1951 a decision was made to hold an exhibition in part of the Boy’s Club in Mermaid Street, Rye.  They chose to call themselves the RX Group, RX being the registration of the local fishing fleet.  A year later they joined up with other younger artists and together formed the Rye Society of Artists and held their first exhibition at the Further Education Centre in 1952.     

Geoffrey was involved with the RSA for forty years, being a founder member, regular exhibitor and one-time Chairman. His work has been exhibited many times over the years.  In Rye, for example, there was a joint exhibition with Leslie Davies at the Easton Rooms in 1971 and a Retrospective Exhibition at the Stormont Studio in 1982 entitled Ships, Nudes and Architecture.   

What was called at the time the ‘final accolade’ to a man who achieved so much in his lifetime was the Retrospective Exhibition held at the Stormont Studio, 16th October – 20th November 1993, which was attended by over 2,000 people. Here was displayed his mastery and skill in working in all media:  oil, watercolour, pastel, crayon, charcoal, pencil, scraperboard and litholgraphy.    (At left is Net Houses Hastings.)  Some of the works displayed are included in the permanent  collection of the Rye Art Gallery.     

There has in fact been yet another exhibition since , this time of his work as a commercial artist in Canada (1930-1945) at the Turtle Fine Art Gallery in 2004.   The exhibitions have sometimes surprised people familar only with his civic achievements in Rye.  

Geoffrey Bagley as Museum Curator, Mayor and Civic Leader, Historian and Writer

Apart from his painting, Geoffrey found time to re-establish the Rye Museum and serve as Honorary Curator for 38 years. The Museum won a National Heritage Award in 1975, mainly due to Geoffrey’s meticulous attention to accuracy and detail and his artist’s eye for display.    

In 1956 he was elected Mayor of Rye and held that post for two further years.    He was also a Speaker of the Cinque Ports, a County Councillor, a JP and as we learned at the beginning of this article, in 1973 he was the last person to be elected a Freeman of the Borough of Rye.  He  served on numerous committees. In 1956, the first year of his mayoralty, he was also President of the Rye and Winchelsea Rotary Club, being named  a Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International in 1989.  He wss a Trustee of the Rye Art Gallery.    

Among Geoffrey’s most lasting contributions to Rye are the publications pertaining to Rye and its environs which he wrote and illustrated.  The list of these is long and includes:  

Book of Rye, The
Connoisser’s Guide to Rye, A
Edwardian Rye
Old Inns and Ale Houses
Pictorial Guide to Romney Marsh, A
Prospect of Rye. A
Rye Church Clock
Story of the Ypres Tower and Rye Museum, The William Holloway  

The Book of Rye  was presented to the Duchess of Kent when she visited Rye in April, 1982