Final reminder: SUBSCRIPTIONS (£2.75) are now due, unless your copy is ticked beside your name.Cheque or cash, please, to 2 Cyprus Place by 30 June if you wish to receive the 3 July issue.
Last Tuesday night Rye Town Council made history: it appointed the town's first-ever woman Town Clerk in six hundred and eighty-five years.
Sixty-four Clerks are listed on the Town Hall wall panels: the first, Peter de Heghtone, served for 32 years from 1300.Among his successors was Samuel Jeake from 1651 to 1661, and other names familiar to students of the town's history appear at frequent intervals - Hartshorn, Grebell, Frewen, Curteis, Proctor and of course Dawes. Between them, four members of the Dawes family (Weeden, Edwin Nathaniel, Walter and Edwin Plomley) notched up over a century sitting behind the Town Clerk's desk.
It is hardly necessary to say who has now been appointed heir to this long and distinguished tradition. Mrs. Lesley Scammell's poise and dignity when she took the Clerk's seat on Roger Breeds's left at the Mayoring in May was much remarked on. After just over two years as the Town Clerk's assistant, she was appointed Acting Town Clerk in April - soon after Mr. Baker's sad accident on Good Friday made it legally essential that the office should be filled. When Mr. Baker made the decision to give up his post, he came over personally to the meeting of the General Purposes and Finance Committee to offer the resignation which he had already sent in writing, and also to give his recommendation about a successor. The matter was then discussed at a specially-convened meeting of the full Town Council last week, and Mrs. Scammell's appointment dates from 14 June.
John Baker has been Rye's Town Clerk for almost seven years, and his tenure of office will perhaps be best remembered for the part he played in establishing the Rye Model as the money-spinner and tourist attraction it is today.He was also, of course, much involved in the work which resulted in the present beautiful appearance of the Town Hall's council chamber. Everyone is more than sorry that such a disastrous accident has had to bring about his resignation, but grateful to him for training his assistant to take his place so competently when the need arose.
I asked Lesley Scammell if she had been used to local government work before she came to the Town Hall?The answer is no.But although she trained as a shorthand-typist, she worked for some years in an accountant's office, and so the considerable accounts side of the Town Clerk's job presents no particular problem - indeed, she prepared the accounts for the recent annual audit on her own, having done them last year under Mr. Baker's supervision.Her shorthand, she says sadly, is still a bit rusty (we know the feeling!) - but she has been turning her hand to other things over the years.As well as raising a son, now 23 and living in Bexhill, she and her roofing-contractor husband have built themselves three houses in their "spare" time - two in Bexhill and their present home in Sea Road, Winchelsea Beach.(In fact, as far as we know, running repairs to the fabric of the Town Hall are no part of the Town Clerk's personal labours - on the other hand, a bit of building experience never comes amiss...)
Congratulations both to Mrs. Scammell and to the Town Council on this historic appointment!DON'T FORGET TO VOTE TOMORROW.It matters to the candidates whom you choose, but it matters even more to the town that you should choose someone.A good turnout could be the start of a new interest in the Town Council.
Mrs. Winnie Corboy died peacefully on 18 May at the home of her daughter in Airdrie, Scotland; Mrs. Corboy was 92, and was the widow of Mr. Jim Corboy of Winchelsea Road. After cremation and a Requiem Mass in Scotland, her family gathered in Rye Cemetery on 21 June for the interment of her ashes in the family grave. Before she moved to Scotland, Mrs. Corboy lived for ten years at Grey-friars, and her family would like to thank the staff at the home for the wonderful care and affection they showed her during that time.
Two slim volumes now available in Rye will be of interest to local readers.
The first of what is likely to be a series of "Rye Museum Miniatures", written by Geoffrey Bagley, is a brief but comprehensive history of the Church Clock, with seven photographs and even a bibliography. It is on sale in the Museum (and also, we assume, at the Church bookstall), price 40p - a pleasant and inexpensive souvenir of a visit to either place.
A larger booklet in every dimension is "Quintet", a collection in modestly-produced form of the work of five local poets.It is available from both Rye and Winchelsea Museums, and also from the Easton Rooms in the High Street, and profits from the £1.50 price will go towards the Pamela Nash Dialysis Memorial Fund; four of her drawings appear in the book.The writers are Pamela's husband Ernest Collyer, of the Winchelsea Station Pottery, who tells us he has been writing poetry since the age of ten; Basil Dowling of Mill Place, whose work is normally published in small editions in his native New Zealand and rarely reaches British bookshops; A J Amos, who lives on Rye Hill; C W Morris of The Mint; and Sheila Shannon. Her contribution comes from her 1947 book of poems "The Lightning-Struck Tower", and she has not published any appreciable amount of poetry since; she is better known in Rye as Mrs. Sheila Dickinson of Church Square.
We are not competent to review poetry, but it is certainly interesting to see a poet's view of such everyday Rye things as a sheep sale or a railway journey (Basil Dowling), a fund-raising coffee morning or Rye Market (Dr. Amos), while Ernest Collyer is more at home in the country.Mr. Morris and Sheila Shannon take a rather wider view; and the book includes a final poem by Pamela Nash. The ones we liked best were Sheila Shannon's "Gardens of Adonis" and Basil Dowling's brief musing at the top of Rye Hill; but all are enjoyable, and the book deserves an excellent reception.
Members of the Local History Group, meeting on Thursday, very much enjoyed Barry Funnell's historic slides illustrating the story of the Rye river barges. Normally 55' long, 10' or 12' wide, and drawing just 2' of water, they carried cargo up the Rother to Newenden and beyond, and also up the Brede, until the railway and lorry transport took away their trade and the bargees were reduced to spearing eels or picking blackberries beside the towoath (though the barges were more often poled or sailed than towed) to sell in Rye to augment their pay. All the barges are gone now, though one hulk is reported to remain at the Harbour (would anyone be interested in helping to restore it?); even the pleasure-trips which were on offer briefly in the 1960s from Strand Quay have never been repeated. Surely there must be an opening here for someone?
Peter Howlett reported on his self-imposed task, carried out for two hours once a week in the course of a regular trip to Hastings, of reading through all the WWI copies of the Sussex Express on the micro-viewer in Hastings Library and noting down items of Rye interest which will later be photocopied for reference over here. We shall of course be saying more about this as the project continues.
Members were delighted to welcome back Jean Greenhalf, cheerful if still rather limp after her recent operation; she has been using her convalescence sorting out the "Rye's Own" photographs, and when she gets back to the Library hopes to display there a selection of the unidentified ones so that people can tell her who and what they represent.
3.
We are very pleased to record that two Rye army families saw the names of their sons in the recent Birthday Honours List.
The CBE has gone to Major-General Edward Jones, of the Greenjackets, son of General Sir Charles and Lady Jones of Point Hill; CBEs must run in the family - Sir Charles is similarly honoured. Hamish Adams was once a pupil at the Collegiate School; he is now a Major in the Royal Signals, at present stationed in Hong Kong with the Queen's Gurkha Signals - his mother, Mrs. Daphne Adams of Military Road, is not entirely pleased that all his postings seem to be abroad!He has been awarded the MBE - good news, for a change, for Mrs. Adams, who is making a slow but now more promising recovery from an accident in the autumn.
We have been studying the two public notices in which the Black Boy and Shades announce their intention of applying to the Magistrates on 3 July for licences to sell alcohol. Shades is applying for a restaurant licence.The wording of the Black Boy's application was confusing, but we understand that in fact they are also applying for a restaurant licence, ie. to sell drink with meals consumed on the premises. But we do wonder just what constitutes a meal - presumably something more than a Chilly Cornet or Lurid Lolly?
We had hoped to be offering congratulations this week. Last Wednesday's remarks about advertising signs at the Hilder's Cliff end of the High Street obviously echoed the opinions of many people in the town, to judge from the considerable feedback, and on Thursday it seemed that both cafes had taken the hint. Shades had removed its pavement boards (though not its milk churns); and the Black Boy was down to a perfectly acceptable three signs. But on Sunday we were sorry to notice that the Black Boy had restored its pavement ice-cream board, though it was folded back against the wall out of the way of pedestrians; also back were the enamel teapot and the plastic ice-cream banner. A third ice-cream sign plus the familiar "Cold Drinks and Ices" had retired inside the window, at least.
But on Monday the Indian restaurant was obstructing the pavement with a menu board!
At the Conservation Society meeting in the Town Hall on Friday, the question of excessive advertising was raised (we are told that it is also under fire in Battle), and a third cafe was mentioned particularly as drawing attention to itself to the irritation of its neighbours. We went down The Mint to have a look: sure enough, even smaller than the Black Boy is the little tea-room in Hylands Yard, and it has signs - vertical lettering on the upper corner of the wall, a hanging sign, a large painted board and a chalked-up blackboard, all on or over its tiny front yard past which all the other inhabitants of Hylands Yard have to go every time they leave their homes. The fifth sign stands in the V of the lane entrance.
At the Police Station, we consulted Chief Inspector Dyson over the regulations about pavement boards - from the point of view of obstruction (as opposed to looks, planning restrictions or just public opinion). He told us that if someone obstructs the public way with anything, they can be required to remove it; if necessary they can be taken to court. If, however - as is often the case in Rye - part of the pavement is not strictly speaking public but is the property of the shop concerned, then (from the point of view of the police) the owner can put whatever he likes on that part within reason. This applies to the Regent Square shops, since the old cinema forecourt extended up to the edge of the normal-width pavement.
If, Chief-Inspector Dyson continued, a case is taken to court, the offending owner may be fined.The fine is not likely to be enormous. What might well be enormous, however, is the amount awarded in damages in a civil action brought by someone who has an accident as a result of the obstruction; elderly people or those with poor sight are particularly at risk. And, he added, although residents may be used to dodging round the hazards on our crowded summer pavements, visitors are not...
4.
Thrice welcome to a new venture from Radio Sussex! From Monday of next week, a magazine programme for our eastern end of the county takes the air. Called "Lunch Date 258" it will go out only on medium wave 258m (1161 kHz), which gives much the best reception round here, and will replace the first twenty to thirty minutes of "Hollis at Home" - i.e. starting at 1.10 and blending into Joanna Hollis's programme at a convenient point between 1.30 and 1.40.This means that we get our local news stories in the course of the lunch-hour, between Radio 4's one-o'clock news and the Archers repeat at 1.40, Monday to Friday - what could be more obliging of them?
If you have a story of fairly local interest which would be suited to the new programme, the phone number for David Arscott - the producer in charge of the eastern end - is Eastbourne (0323) 639359.
Welcome home to Leslie Stutely of Vidler & Co, who has just enjoyed three weeks in and around Los Angeles with his younger son Trevor, who is promotion manager for CBS Entertainment there.He spent a good deal of time at the Santa Monica Yacht Club - over 9,000 boats are moored in a vast harbour.A highlight of the visit was a day at the Getty Museum, "of special interest to me" he says drily - Vidlers' sale customers, be prepared!They drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to San Diego on the Mexican border, saluting the USA Pacific Fleet which was "at home" in the harbour; over 39,000 vehicles pass over the Coronado Bridge there on an average 121...He saw the ''Queen Mary" and Howard Hughes's amazing plane "Spruce Goose" at Long Beach.He did The Lot. The temperature was between 70° and 97° all the time.
Then he came home, a ten-hour non-stop flight by DC10 - a pleasant but somewhat boring flight, he told us (but in view of recent developments, boring would seem to be an excellent recommendation for a flight just at the moment!). He came home to Rye Bay on a falling tide, Cinque Ports Street on market day, and the full horror of the British Summer; but he came all the same, and it's nice to have him back!
0pthalmic opticians Wilson, Wilson & Hancock are moving down at the weekend - not just downstairs from their first-floor premises in East Street, where they have been for the past 13 years, but right down to Cinque Ports Street, where they are the new owners of Wall Cottage, between the Town Wall car park and the Postern Gate surgery. They feel that this will be much more convenient for their clientele, many of whom are elderly and find the walk up to the High Street followed by the East Street staircase rather taxing.The Wall Cottage premises will have wheelchair access and other facilities impossible until now.
The firm is a branch of the main practice in Hastings, and both Mr. Wilsons (senior and junior) are working for it; Mr. Hancock, who lives in Beckley, played a leading part in the recent Eye Laser Appeal.
Friday's patients, right up to 5 pm, will still be seen in East Street - Monday morning's at Wall Cottage. The two days inbetween are going to be extremely busy for the staff!They had hoped to move a week ago, but their (non-local) builders let them down; Derek Boreham took over at extremely short notice and with little more than a week in hand has, we are glad to report, worked wonders.
This move within the town is one of a number, Richard Popple at Geering & Colyer tells us, which have taken place in recent weeks simply involving local people who want something larger or smaller and are thankful to find it without having to move away. (In Benson's day, summer lets worked on this basis; the grander houses were let for the season, and everyone moved it.But try doing that now, and you might all too easily get a Third World diplomat occupying your home with impunity for years!)
5.
"A miracle" said Sir Brian Batsford on Sunday afternoon, as the sun shone down on Rye to confound the weather forecast. The opening of the gardens of Lamb House and 18 Church Square is an annual event for the National Gardens Scheme, and the date is chosen well in advance to show off both at their best.With the season so late this year, there was an interesting change of emphasis in what was or was not in flower.Sir Brian felt that Lamb House was not yet in full bloom; but the small sheltered rose garden round the lily pond was at its peak, and visitors strolling on the wide immaculate lawn enjoyed the promise as well as the perfection of an English summer garden.Lucia would have loved it.
At his former police station in Church Square, Robert Banks told us that the very cold winter weather had wreaked havoc not only with plants but also with the bugs which attack them - he attributed the particular splendour of this year's roses to the earlier weather.His garden is predominantly white and gold and green, the narrow winding paths revealing new treats round every corner. He told us of a lovely piece of neighbourly co-operation: the refining wall of the cliff at the foot of his ground had to be rebuilt recently, with an enormous amount of rubble piling up as a result. It could have all come laboriously out through his delicate garden into a lorry blocking Church Square.Instead it was levelled watly beneath the new wall and saved over as a terrace for the owner of the house low: 94 people, most of them delighted visitors from away, bought admission tickets for the gardens, says Bill Todd; Lady Batsford and Rosemary Bagley served 410 comforting cups of tea to windswept garden-lovers.
Lamb House garden is, of course, always visible to the public throughout the summer on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons as part of the normal National Trust opening.
We now offer, for the consideration both of readers and of Rother Council, a suggestion put forward at the weekend by two separate residents. Rother sends a team over at intervals to change the bedding plants in the various flower-beds dotted about the town; the scarlet geraniums along the Town Wall car-park look very dramatic, as do the white petunias beside the Landgate - not to mention the three Badger Gate beds, where the frost-bitten yuccas have been removed and new small ones planted (the triumph of hope over experience?).
However, this policy does mean that in the intervals between these descents from the Parks Department, nothing much is done to the beds.Sometimes they are not catered when they should be, sometimes they badly need weeding or the litter cleared; sometimes (eg. the War Memorial, anyway last Sunday) they are just bare earth.
Why can't we have hardy perennials in these beds - shrubs (nothing fancy) where there is room, and smaller established plantings elsewhere? If Rother's nursery only grows geraniums and petunias, etc., as one reader suggests, residents with gardens might be able to supply surplus plants in the autumn for the town beds. In fact the town is full of gardeners, some overworked, others frustrated, and it seems possible that an adoption scheme could be worked out whereby people would undertake to look after a particular bed or border and take pleasure in doing so.
What about it, Mr. Hudson? Or would it bring the unions about our ears?
George Shackleton tells us that the full Council has now agreed to employ consultants to draw up plans for the Rye and Battle sports centres, the first stage in the procedure.
The Council has made new appointments affecting two local schools. George Shackleton and John Lutman are no longer Rother's representatives on the Thomas Peacocke School governors; they have been replaced, on a vote, by John Cawdron and Pauline Tomich. Mrs. Tomich has also been appointed to the committee of management of Hill House School, instead of Mrs. Yates.
Ken Warren's arrival at the AGM of the Rye Conservation Society at the Town Hall on Friday, though delayed, was neatly timed: flooded roads and someone else's accident put hazards in his way, but he was able to warn his audience that he would be late, and in fact the business was just finishing as he entered the room. He referred to the committee's Annual Report as "a fine document" which he had sent to the Secretary of State for the Environment for his comments on several points. He spoke about the Rural Development Area; he felt it needed more momentum (hear, hear!), and suggested that ESCC should hold a public meeting to report on the state of play. He recalled the opening of the Scots Float sluice, making a very good story of it, but in more serious vein spoke about the future of the harbour, whether or not this remains in the hands of the SWA, and about pollution danger from anti-fouling paint on small boats, and bulk oil spillages from large ones.He mentioned the excellent work of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.And then he came to the bypass.How many of those present wanted a bypass at all? (Slightly more than half, by our count) How many wanted it to go through the town rather than south of it?A forest of hands went up; but, it must be remembered, a good many Conservation Society members live on the south side of the town...
Earlier the members had considered and approved the long and comprehensive account of the Society's work over the year, including a helpful report by retiring secretary Peter Smith on the legal basis of conservation in Rye. The accounts showed a most welcome donation of £250 from LWT, in addition to the sum they gave the Society after last year's filming.Peter Howlett is to be the new secretary, and Roy Barnes succeeds Maurice Ellwood as the Chamber of Trade representative on the committee; Alan Crick continues as dhairman„ and the other members were re-elected en bloc.
At the meeting, the owners of two businesses in the Strand area were complimented on work done - to the Strand Snack Bar and the Mill. We went to see them.
Graham and Eva Cole have just completed a ground-floor extension to the front of the cafe which not only doubles the table-space inside but provides a balcony to their flat upstairs and enormously improves the look of the corner for visitors coming into the town from Hastings.Mr. Cole tells us that it is still first and foremost a workman's cafe, but in fact he finds that since the extension was opened they get more local people as well as visitors.His builder was Derek Bull of Camber.
Eric Collins opened the ten-bedroomed guest-house at the Mill last year, convertix the buildings beside it as well as the Mill itself.(They serve breakfast but decided against a restaurant - there are quite enough in the town already, he reckons, and he is certainly not alone in that opinion!)Now the last phase of the work is complete: the repainting of the Mill and the replacement of the open gallery round it. The white "paint" is in fact fibreglass gel, as used for boats, and when it gets grubby it will only need a good scrub to restore it; Mr. Collins says it won't gtt very grubby if he can help it, since the look of the Mill is of course the main advertisement for the Windmill guest-house.As well as repainting, he has taken out some modern windows which had been set into the flanks of the Mill and replaced them with small-paned ones more in keeping with its appearance. He was in charge of the work himself, with help from his scaffolding contractor who stayed on to assist in the actual painting; we asked him (everyone asked him, he said!) how they painted the sweeps? It was quite simple, really; they just wedged the handle of a paint-roller into a hollow section of scaffold-pole and used that.
A third story from a business on The Strand comes in rather a different category. Stephen Tarrant (senior) locked up the Kettle o' Fish after lunch on Saturday and went into the town for some paint.Fortunately he came straight back with it - to discover that two American ladies who had gone out of the back door, as he thought to the car park, twenty minutes before he closed were still inside - incarcerated in the Ladies!
• The Regent Motel office in Cinque Ports Street is now taking bookings for a whole series of cross-Channel outings run by Townsend Thoresen, who pick up and drop off in Rye. Prices run from £10.50 from Rye for a day trip to Boulogne £29.50 buys you two days and a night there, to various outings costing just over £15 to Bruges, Sluis, Dunkirk, Ostend and Le Touquet and involving coach travel on the other side. £18.50 gets you to the Meli Park entertainment centre (Belgium), or to St. Omer with lunch included.Hypermarket visits form part of several of the trips.
• Planning: a new window for a house in Cooper Road, alterations to a house in Love Lane, and an amended application for the Colebrookes factory building at the end of South Undercliff. Mr. Pope of Peasmarsh now suggests demolition of the existing building except for the front wall, and the erection of four dwellings (plus 6 parking spaces), retaining the front wall as part of the fabric of the new building. (See report of the May planning meeting in GAZETTE no. 133.)
• Rye and District Branch of the Bible Society holds its annual summer meeting at Peasmarsh Rectory (in the garden, weather permitting) on Saturday (29 June) at 3. There will be tea, and a bring-and-buy stall; speaker will be James Gladstone on "Going to Borneo". (We are well aware that we normally refuse to publicise events held in the villages as not being on our Patch; but owing to illness it nets not been possible to let Bible Society members know in the normal way, so we are stretching a point just this once!)
• The Sussex Express announced last week that its Roadshow is going to be out and about in the area next week.We asked Nick Larkin about this, and he tells us that it (and he) will be in Rye Market on Thursday week, 3 July, when he looks forward to meeting some of the people to whom he has so far been just a byline in the paper or a voice on the phone.He is not committing himself to handing out balloons and stickers, he says - but there will be free ads on offer, if nothing else.So if you want something written up in the Express, Thursday week is your chance; even if you don't, a friendly hullo would be appreciated.
• Thomas Peacocke School appeared in the Daily Telegraph on Monday in the Cambridge University Natural Sciences class-lists, when Ian Turner's First is recorded as one of just five for the Botany Department (GAZETTE no. 134). We asked the school if this was its first First since it became a comprehensive nearly twenty years ago? No-one could recall an earlier instance; and to have your first First a Cambridge First is setting a very high standard indeed!
• A1so in Monday's Telegraph, Lynda Chalker, Minister of Transport, is reported as saying that she will "soon" announce a preferred route (the next stage after the November 1983 public consultation) for the Winchelsea bypass; see GAZETTE refers to public consultation on possible routes for the Rye bypass; readers are reminded that the original June date for this has been altered to mid-October.
• Bowls: Rye had three home matches last week and managed to play (but not win) all of them despite the dodgy weather: on Wednesday their opponents were the Civil Service, on Saturday Benenden and on Sunday Sidley Martlets.Sunday was a good day, however, because the Club was able to welcome back Reg Weeks, now home in Rope Walk after a period away from Rye.
• After the article in GAZETTE no. 134 on the Falkland Islands postage stamp issue, several readers have pointed out that Camber derives from an old Norman French word meaning "harbour". We did know this - as far as the place just down the road is concerned.But is it really likely that whoever first christened the area of Stanley Harbour which was served by their Camber Railway went right bac to William the Conqueror to find a name for it?Were the first settlers sucha very intellectual lot?(Maybe the answer is yes; but personally we doubt it, and still hope that someone will produce evidence of a more direct connection either with our own Camber or with a similarly-named place elsewhere.)
VOTING in Town Council by-election usual arrangements for "What does the Eucharist mean to us?" - an informal evening with Bishop Peter, Methodist Church, 7.30
Girl Guide 75th birthday event (Rye and District), Gue ,ling, 6.30 YFC Annual Strawberry Ball, The Grove, 8 to 1 (GAZETTE no. 135)
Mental Handicap Week coffee morning and sale, TH, 10 to 12 (Rye Mencap, Hill House, Hill House School, jointly)
Craft Market, FEC, 11 to 5
Greyfriars League of Friends Strawberry Tea at the home, 2.30
Young Ryesingers, Methodist Church, 7.30 (see below)
"The Marriage of Figaro" (Blackheath Opera), CC, 2.45 (GAZETTE no. 135)
BRCS Hearing Circle, Dolphin House, 10.15 to 12
• Congratulations on a very special birthday to a Rye-born lady down here for a short visit from her home in London: Mrs. Ellen Hutchin, younger sister of the late Amy Wood, whose brother Jim still lives in Winchelsea Road. Mrs. Hutchin - who worked "behind the green baize door" at Lamb House in Benson's day - was 80 on Monday.
• Two Ryers born and bred will celebrate their Ruby Wedding - forty years of marriage - on Sunday: Edna and Ernie Handford, of 109 Winchelsea Road, were married in Rye on 30 June 1945. Congratulations!
• Congratulations, too, to Barbara and John Parker, of New Road, on the birth of their first baby: Gavin John was born in the Buchanan on 16 June (Father's Day). Gavin is a grandson for Rosemary and Barry Wilkinson of Pottingfield Road and for Joan and Bill Parker of Leasam Lane.
• More than a dozen members of the Civil Service Retirement Fellowship very much enjoyed a recent visit to the BLODS production of "Chu Chin Chow" at Bexhill.
• The Young Ryesingers musical evening on Saturday includes popular modern music (Nigel Spooner quoted "Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo" as an example), as opposed to "pops" which doesn't mean quite the same thing:The ten young performers will be glad of a good audience - there will be instrumental items and solos too. Tickets £1, children 50p, refreshments available.
• More congratulations, this time to 12-year-old Peter Manktelow of Udimore Road, who is the new Head Chorister at St. Mary's - a job which also involved carrying one of the silver maces on Rye's "state occasions". Peter follows in the processional footsteps of his elder brother Andrew, who was also a St. Mary's Head Chorister.
• More congratulations still, now to Vicky McDonald of Brede and Thomas Peacocke School, who won her under-15 event at the Sussex Schools Athletics Championshipin Brighton on 8 June, throwing the :;avelin 29.2Cm.On Saturday Vicky goes to Andover to represent the County, and we wish her good luck.
• Service washes are once more available at the Tower Launderette, between 2 and 6 pm from Tuesday to Saturday.
• We have been complaining elsewhere about superfluous signs in the town, but someone pointed out that it would be helpful to have one at the Mint end of Needles Passage indicating that it leads to Cinque Ports Street, and vice versa. What do readers think - would it help our visitors?
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office, and published by Mrs. Mary Owen, 2 Cyprus Place, Rye (Rye 222303). News items for inclusion are always welcome - deadline Monday afternoon, Tuesday 9 am for emergencies. The GAZETTE costs 25p weekly, and is delivered to subscribers and pick-up points on Wednesday; a few spare copies are available from Squierels, 9-13 Cinque Ports Street, and back numbers from Cyprus Place. (Copyright Mary Owen 1985)