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The junction of the new cut with the Brede is close to the hair-pin bend
on the road leading from the A259 to Winchelsea Beach. The new cut ran
parallel to the road from the bend to Winchelsea Beach village centre
and behind the present line of bungalows which face the road; the site
of the great sluice is behind the Ship Inn a few yards down Willow Lane.
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In the village, just opposite the area where the shop now stands, the cut swung 45 degrees to the left and the outer channel of the New Harbour is readily seen running up to the present sea wall . The remains of the east stone pier, and at low tide the two pier heads or harbour arms, are still visible. |
In 1762, 38 years after the work commenced, an Act of Parliament permitted the Commissioners to let the sea into the new channel but only as far as the junction with the Brede or Winchelsea Channel. It was at this critical stage that the advice of John Smeaton FRS (1724-1792) (who had designed and built Eddystone lighthouse), was sought. His professional backing was seen as underpinning the project. Briefly he advised uniting the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede and forcing the three rivers through the new cut to the sea. His plan involved making a new channel for the Rother to the north of the Town, although he accepted that a southern cut would be acceptable.
| Smeaton was never the resident engineer and his name has come to be associated with a technical and managerial failure, and worse. John Collard has written that orders were succeeded by counter-orders, construction was followed by demolition, dredging by siltation. The Commissioners had opted for the southern route for the Rother. In June 1787 the Commissioners ordered that no vessel was to pass up the old channel towards Rye after 14 July. All trade was then passed through the New Harbour, mostly to the Strand wharf. There were continual problems with keeping the harbour mouth open and free of accumulations of beach; there was evidence that land drainage into the new system was not proving successful. The autumn of 1787 was unusually wet, and all the levels became flooded to an alarming extent. |
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On 6 November 1787 the Harbour Commissioners, who were also
Commissioners of the different Levels, recorded their despair and resolved
to abandon the New Harbour and to re-open the old. All dams and walls
were to be removed, all work suspended and the workmen dismissed.
In April 1789 the merchants tradesmen and owners of vessels recorded their
sincere thanks to the Commissioners for having restored to them ’the
Ancient Harbour of Rye’.
If Smeaton’s recommendations had been pursued with professional and managerial competence and energy, would the New Harbour have been successful and would the drainage of the Levels have been adequate? It is, perhaps, doubtful.
Sources and further reading:
Minutes of the Rye Harbour Commissioners: East Sussex Record Office
KRA 1 1/1 h 1/2
John Meryon Account of the Origin and Formation of the Harbour of Rye...
Rye Castle Museum
John Collard A Maritime History of Rye 1978 (Cap.VI)
L.A.Vidler A New History of Rye 1934 and 1971 pp.104-107
Graham Mayhew Tudor Rye 1987 (Cap.7)
