When Anne Hamilton added up the figures, she was amazed to find that she had taken 774 pairs of spectacles over to Ashford for the Help the Aged appeal! People brought in those they had hoarded for ten years, not knowing what to do with them when Mum died - and Anne is grateful to the Baptist Church, and to Rayners and Wilson Wilson & Hancock, who added their own collections.
One of the Lea Avenue phone-boxes is the first in Rye to be adapted for use with British Telecom's new phonecard; two out of the three at the top of Station Approach will be following suit very soon, once Seeboard has done its part. Already on sale in Lea Avenue, the cards will be available from the Post Office and at another outlet (as yet unspecified) in Cinque Ports Street: they come in multiples of the basic 10p call-box unit x 10 (costing £1), 20, 40, 100 and 200, and to avoid damage should be kept in the plastic wallets in which they are supplied. The £4 40-unit cards are the most popular, with the 10-unit ones often being bought for children to have handy ("Mum, I've missed the bus..."). Their use is very simple, with instructions displayed in the Phonecard boxes; when the card is inserted, a display shows how many units are left, and this changes as the call progresses. There is a facility for using up the tail-end of one card and starting a new one on the same call, so nothing is wasted. The cards are, of course, standard throughout the country, and make very sensible presents for elderly relatives who are not on the phone at home.
A press release from British Rail on Friday announced that as from Sunday, standard tickets only will be available for purchase on the train by passengers who travel from "stations with ticket purchase facilities... Passengers joining at stations where there are no ticket purchase facilities will still be able to obtain cheap tickets and discounts on the train".
This is worrying in view of a report which reached us the day before. Someone who often uses the train had left Rye by rail on both Monday and Tuesday of that week, and had found the station booking-hall closed both days; indeed, she had got as far as the Lewes barrier without being asked to show a ticket at all, and could easily have slipped through that without paying if she hadn't been an honest woman. On Wednesday, too, the booking-hall was closed during anyway part of the day.
So is Rye "a station with ticket purchase facilities" or not? We rang Area Manager Harry Holt for clarification. He told us that in fact extra staff had been taken on at Rye and there are now four people employed there, so the booking office should be open - but there are times when illness or emergency can mean its closure. When BR has advance notice of this, guards on our 1:ne are told, but even so the news would not have filtered through to (for instance) the Lewes barrier.
In general, says Mr. Holt, guards will use their discretion whether to take a passenger's word for it that a station normally open was in fact closed on a particular occasion. The logical implication of this would seem to be that whereas the GAZETTE's eminently respectable subscribers could probably risk it, their backpacking student sons perhaps should not! To be on the safe side, travellers can always get their tickets not from the station at all but from Baidwins, the travel agency opposite the Post Office, who are open during normal hours all week.
And the crossing-gate problem on Saturday morning? This was due to a signal failure: the signalman's lever wouldn't go down properly - and so the gates, playing safe, wouldn't go up!
2.
Mrs. Ida Skinner, of Ferry Road and formerly of Winchelsea, died on 1 October. Born in Winchelsea, Mrs. Skinner had been an invaluable member of the Thomas Peacocke School PTA committee, and will be known to many Rye people as a former receptionist at the surgery of one of our doctors. Only in her forties at the time of her death, Mrs. Skinner had known for some years that she had cancer, and had put up a shiningly courageous fight for life which was an inspiration to all who knew her and will not easily be forgotten. Much sympathy goes to her husband and three children. The funeral takes place on Friday (10th) at 12.30 at Winchelsea Church, and will be followed by cremation.
Mrs. Ellen Orford, whose death on 25 September at the age of 83 we recorded last week, had lived all her life in Rye. Her father, Frank Ashenden, had been a Town Councillor; he gave up a flourishing builder's business in Rye to join the Army in the early days of WW1, and was killed in France. For some years his widow ran a little private school in Rye. Fred Orford and Nellie Ashenden met during WW1, when Fred was appointed to the Post Office in the High Street (when he retired in 1960, he had been its Postmaster for ten years); they were married in St. Mary's in 1925, and celebrated their Diamond Wedding in June last year. Sadly, their younger daughter Pat died three months ago, and their surviving daughter Stephanie writes "That great sorrow, ---' combined with her own declining health, meant that Nellie felt herself less any less able to attend her church and the Monday Club where she had previously been so well known. She will be greatly missed by her family and many friends."
Photographer Linda McCartney's exhibition in the High Street gallery is called "Sun Pictures" because she uses the sun to print the negatives onto specially coated paper, so each print is unique. Taken over the past three years, the photographs cover a wide range of subjects. The sepia prints are sometimes reminiscent of the work of Victorian photographers, particularly the fishing-boat and the portrait called "Coalman, Rye 1984"; the blue ones are disconcerting at first sight, but the colour makes an interesting variation and can be very effective. A striking feature common to both is the elaborate mounting technique Mrs. McCartney uses. (Another striking feature was the turn-out for the private view, with Mrs. McCartney's husband and children among the guests!)
At the foot of the stairs, Heather McCartney has a small display of her pottery and drawings; and in the Craft Gallery Peter Beard's pottery catches the eye with much use of an unusual pale turquoise colour, enlivening pots otherwise mainly ethnic in form and decoration.
The upstairs gallery houses the pictures and crafts from the gallery's regular "stable" of artists. It is a pleasure to revisit Graham Clarke's castle with the builders in and the washing out ("Notte Todaye"), and Louis Turpin has a rare marine painting, of a Hastings fishing-boat all decked out with bunting in >a stiff breeze. A big John Bratby splashes colour on the opposite wall.
For some weeks now, two enterprising girls have been delivering lunchtime sandwiches to desks and workbenches in Rye and its immediate vicinity. Carol and Lucy run "Upper Crust" from 44b The Mint, and are now on the phone (Rye 224525). Orders, regular or otherwise, can be delivered at short notice if necessary, and the driver always brings with her a selection of soft drinks, fruit and chocolate for "afters". The girls shop locally as far as is practicable, and the sand- wiches are freshly made on the premises and sealed in a firm plastic container that will double as a plate and keep the crumbs out of the typewriter. They can also offer catering of the more usual kind; why not, they say, hold your staff Christmas party in the office, complete with disco if required? They will do the lot, to say nothing of a wedding or any other social event. But it is the sandwich service which their elegant gold-and-black card promotes, and which is the basis of the business; they will be very glad to discuss terms for small or large quantities, regularly or one-off. For those who want to sample, Upper Crust sandwiches are available daily at Spar (opposite the Post Office).
3 - THE RYE GAZETTE, 8 October 1986
Local Radio Sussex listeners feared the worst when they heard on Thursday that a fire at the Davie's Coaches garage in Harbour Road early that morning had left a man dead and damaged five coaches. However, though sad, the news was not disastrous for the company; the damage was caused by smoke not flame, and neither Mr. Davie nor any of his family had been down there. The dead man, whose body was found in his burnt-out car, has not yet been named by police, who are awaiting the result of forensic tests before they can be certain of their provisional identification.
The Rye Branch of the Conservative Association reports, with pride and some surprise, that the money taken at its Autumn Fair on Saturday at the FE Centre totalled just over £800 - more, by a long way, than any similar event has ever raised before! The Fair was opened by Mrs. Ken Warren, and over 300 people paid 30p for admission and coffee in the course of the morning. The happy winner of the 1½ litre bottle of whisky was Hugh Brooking of Leasam Lane; there were lots of prizes in the regular raffle as well, and the committee (especially Bill Todd) are most grateful to a large number of local traders who uncomplainingly provided prizes.
Another mystery is thickening up, this time over the state of the Cooper Road houses. The Housing Officer was due to report on the problem to the Housing Committee on Monday, and we had hoped to include in this week's paper a summary of his report - so that an accurate account could replace the intriguing and doubtless misleading rumours. However, Mr. Catt's report was presented to the committee in that section of the meeting from which press and public are excluded, and which normally deals with individual housing applications, rent arrears, etc. The agenda makes clear that this is because it will include "the amount of any expenditure proposed to be incurred by the authority under any particular contract for the acquisition of property or the supply of goods or services".
Pauline Tomich,Rye's Councillor on the Housing Committee, was quoted in the News recently as saying "There is subsidence there but the situation is nothing like people are making out" - which is very probable, but would be more easily believed if Rother would simply say just what the problems are. Certainly Cooper Road, apart from some blank windows, looks quite normal; the odd crack is noticeable in the partly-slab-built houses, but nothing is visible from the street - yet! - as being shored up, let alone falling down.
The comprehensive school's art department is making a good showing in County circles and beyond at present. Leila Jamieson and Liza Gilchrist currently have work on show in an exhibition at Seaford, following ESCC courses for A-level students; and Jeremy Nemeth (ex-Leasam and now on an art foundation course) will have a picture, "Oast House on the Beach", included in the University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate's 1987 calendar: Since the pictures for the calendar are selected from all the 0- and A-level work which is submitted for examination, this is indeed a feather in Jeremy's cap.
The Hastings Branch of the National Children's Homes reports that its support from local schools during the past year amounted to £1,962. Of this, £300 came from Thomas Peacocke Lower School, and Mike Thomas tells us that this is brought in entirely by the Sunny Smiles booklets which pupils have used for years (first encouraged by Ron Dipper, and now by Andy Lewis) to solicit donations from parents and friends - and he is astonished how much money they still bring in.
The Lower School play this year, on 9 and 10 December, is a version of the Oscar Wilde parable "The Selfish Giant", produced with music and dance by Elizabeth Bush and Margaret Marshall. In March, Upper School will be presenting "Ulysses", a rock opera directed by Chris Rose and Lois Benton. Details of both nearer the time.
4.
A hundred years ago, someone lined a box with a sheet of newspaper - the South Eastern Advertiser for Saturday, 10 April 1886. Otherwise empty, the box was in Vidlers' sale on Friday, and it was Pat Ciccone who spotted that the bit of paper in the bottom was of surprising interest. That particular page carried news items under the sub-heading "Rye Chronicle"; it may have been what would now be called the Rye slip page.
It is appropriate that the advertisements start with a number of agricultural announcements from Messrs. Jas. C. Vidler, Son and Clements of "Havelock Road, Hastings and (postal address) Magdala House, Rye"; it was, readers will recall, James Coleman Vidler who built Magdala House, and apparently used it as his Rye office as well. However, the leading house agents then seem to have been Woodhams, also of Havelock Road, who list in detail the items in a house sale "japanned hip and sponge baths, iron French bedsteads, palliasses, spring and flock mattresses, linoleum" as well as pieces of furniture which could well have been in the auction rooms on Friday. Woodhams also had a tenant looking for a "comfortable furnished country residence with two reception rooms, three bedrooms, offices and good garden" at not more than 2i guineas a week, and were seeking a let for an unfurnished four-bedroomed detached house at Ninfield at £15 a year. Six bedrooms in St. Leonards, however, plus a housekeeper's room and library, would have cost the tenant £55 a year.
Public notices include the Orders for the Week for the 1st Cinque Ports Rifles (Letter "E" Company, Rye) from James Kelly, Sergt.-Major; and invitations to tender, from the Rye Cattle Market Company for sheep pens and from the Diocesan Surveyor for rebuilding and extending Brede Rectory. Commercial announcements came from JL Deacon's Tea Warehouse, 75 and 76 The Mint, complete with a four-verse poem ("Let some lavish their looks and give bonus books, but Deacon gives value in tea"), and from jeweller CR Allen at 21 Landgate. Delves & Son, at the top of Lion Street, somehow managed to get their advertisement into the editorial columns: "all wool fine French cashmeres, 1s6--d, worth 2s6d ... lace curtains from ls6d pair, four-button kid gloves 1s6id ... men's suits, to measure, 28s, ready-made, special value, 17s6d to 21s."
The three long columns of news include a reference to Tuesday early closing already established in Rye "for some years past"; the appointment of Mr CH Stenning of Rovingdene as a County Magistrate; the quarterly meeting of the Wesleyan Methodist circuit; and the visit of a troupe of players. The funeral of Mr. Egbert Fryman of the Gun Garden "who expired under circumstance%-, reported in our last issue" at the age of 45, was attended by everyone who was anyone; and many of the same names appear as being present at the formal tea for 92 persons marking the opening of new premises for the Rye Branch of the YMCA in the upper room of the Coffee Tavern. The account of this took up 24 column-inches of very small print, and for the sake of old times we list the surnames: Meryon and Woodhams (the ladies in charge of the catering), Sharpe, Stocks, Rubie, Dawes, Clements, Stonham, Longley, Bayley, Delves, Hinds, Deacon, Leaver, Bellingham, Gasson, Watson, House, Cox, Petty, Chapman, Hunt, Bourne, Jordan, Ashbee...
At the fortnightly meeting of the Rye Board of Guardians, there was a somewhat acrimonious discussion about "the quantity of stimulants consumed by the sick poor". In No. 1 district (whose Medical Officer was Dr. Woodhams of Bank House), consumption over the previous quarter had been 441 bottles of brandy, 26 of wine, 5 of whisky and 3 of rum; in the combined nos. 2 and 3 districts, just one bottle of brandy had been .administered. The Clerk said "that Dr. Woodhams had told him he never ordered stimulants unless he considered them absolutely necessary. The Chairman said that the other doctors did not appear to consider them absolutely necessary. Mr. Lord said there appeared to be a difference of opinion as to the expedience of stimulants between the Medical Officers..." The matter was deferred, so we shall never know whether or not the kind-hearted Dr. Woodhams was allowed to go on pouring brandy by the bottleful down the throats of Rye's "sick poor" a century ago.
5.
We offer this list now primarily as a guide for groups with events still to be slotted into the pre-Christmas calendar. It does not include regular club meetings or TPS parents' evenings, which will appear in due course in the back- page diary. If you have something booked which should be here and isn't, please ring the Editor (222303) as soon as possible; we can publish a supplementary list in a week or two if necessary.
Monday Club sale of work, Clinic, 2
Thomas Peacocke School Open Evening, 6.30 to 9
Day Centre coffee morning, Red Cross, 10.30
Tilling Green School Autumn Sale, 6
Thomas Peacocke School PTA AGM, 7.30
RAFA coffee morning, Red Cross, 10
Scouts jumble sale, Scout Hut, 1.30
Old Scholars Association Annual Dinner, Hope Anchor
SDP, open discussion on problems of nuclear power, FEC, 7.30
RNLI coffee morning, FEC, 10.30
Nat.Trust talk, "Martello Towers" (Barry Funnell), CC, 2.30
FRAG talk, "E.Sussex 200 years ago" (Barry Funnell), RAG, 8
Community Health Council public meeting, TH, 2.30
Rye Hospital League of Friends AGM, TH, 7.30
TPS PTA jumble sale, Upper School, 1.30
Remembrance Sunday service, St. Mary's, 11
Playgroup sale of children's clothes, Clinic, 10.30 to 3.30
Conservation Society informal gathering (members)
Mencap AGM, George Hotel, 7.30
National Trust AGM, CC, 7.30
Playden Church Christmas Fair, FEC, morning
Annual Lifeboat Service, Rye Harbour, 3
Salvation Army Band concert, St. Mary's, 7.30
Mus.Ass. talk, "More aspects of Rye" (Alma Fabes), FEC, 7.30
Jumble sale for Community Centre funds, CC, 10
Catholic Church Christmas Fair, FEC, 2.30
Wine-and-cheese party, Sussex Historic Churches Trust, TH, 7.30
NSPCC, presentation of Raft Race cheque and a brief talk by the new Regional Organiser, George Hotel, evening
Rye Hospital League of Friends wine-and-cheese party, raffle draw, and auction, TH, 7.15
Women's British Legion Christmas Fair, Red Cross, 10 to 4
Scouts Christmas Fair, 10.30
Playgroup Christmas Fair, Clinic, 2 to 4
Father Christmas turns on Chamber of Trade Christmas lights
FRAG talk, "Royal Greenwich Observatory" (Janet Dudley), RAG, 8
NSPCC Christmas coffee morning, George Hotel, 10 to 12
Museum Association party (members), TH
Movie Society "At Home to Friends" (invitations), FEC
National Trust Christmas dinner, CC
Rye Dance Centre "Showbiz III", Upper Sch., evening (and Saturday)
Lower School play, "The Selfish Giant", 7.30 (and Wednesday)
"Amahl and the Night Visitors" (New Sussex Opera), St. Mary's, 8
Last WI Market of season, CC, 10
FRAG Christmas party (members)
Last Craft Market of season, FEC, 11 to 5
Ryesingers Christmas Concert, St. Mary's, evening Carols with Methodist Church Choir, 7.30
TPS Upper School Carol Concert, evening
Last day of term (school starts again on 7 January)
TPS Recent Leavers get-together, Queen's Head, evening.
6.
A welcome innovation at Rye Post Office is the rack in the far corner from the door, which holds all the various application forms for such things as passports, road tax, driving licences and tests, and so forth - for which we used to have to queue at the counter. The other leaflets and posters have also been arranged so that national savings literature is in one rack, postal information in another, etc.
All we want now (apart from that perennial complaint, better door-opening arrangements) is the clock restored to the window. Agreed, there is one at the back of the counter, but strangers don't know that and car-drivers can't see it anyway. We asked Hastings Post Office about this early in February, and were then told that it had gone wrong almost immediately after the refurbishment work was completed, and was in the hands of the engineers. That was eight months ago...!
Not much has been heard lately about the finances of Rye Hospital, and we have been hopefully assuming that no news is good news. Good news from Rye was certainly conveyed in a report to the HHA in July, which sets out the financial position of the Authority's various services in April and May. Whereas the -` spending on the four "acute" hospitals (RESH, Bexhill, St. Helen's and the Buchanan) was more than £35,000 over the £641,000 budget for the period, the Community Unit figure, with a budget of £425,000, was underspent by £5,700, and of this nearly £2,000 was from savings made at Rye. A straw in the wind, perhaps, for local people to clutch at?
The new railway car park is now cleared except for a final pile of earth and a super-thick concrete structure still in one corner on Monday - the base, the workmen were told, of the tank from which the engines once filled their boilers. The next stage is to erect the rest of the fence, lay the drainage pipes, and set out the curbs; the foreman told us that they hope to be ready to tarmac at the end of the month, and the fine weather has certainly helped the work 5along. In the Goods Yard, the public car park now covers only the site of the Goods Shed and Ellis Bros's former yard; the orange ribbons have been replaced by a more substantial split-chestnut fence, and it is important to stick to the footpath or you can't get out! The piles are in, and on Monday the men were working on a deep drainage trench at the back of the Crown Inn.
John Walker hopes to put up a plan of the whole site in the station booking-ha: if BR will agree, so that people can see for themselves just what is to be where. Certainly we have been shown a sketch-plan, well-authenticated according to its owner, which has an entirely different layout from that which went before Rother, so perhaps the sooner an official one goes up, the better!
Leasam House, the co-ed boarding house which ESCC runs as an adjunct to Thomas Peacocke School, has been visited twice lately by Education Committee members. Political changes at Lewes have meant new chairmen for both the Education Committee (David Bellotti) and the boarding panel (David Hill); Mr. Hill was among the first group, and when he discovered that some of his panel had never been to Leasam he insisted that they all came. They arrived last Thursday after school so that they could talk to the boarders and share their evening meal. They inspected the whole place, dormitories and all, and Anne Wood (chairman of the Leasam Governors) tells us that Mr. Hill was not impressed with the standard of furnishings and decoration. (He should have seen the place five years ago, she added, before Governors and school staff started work with pots of paint!) Housemaster Dick Wright heads a team which includes Julia Thomas (Assistant Housemistress), John Crouch (Assistant Housemaster) and Monica Flint (Matron), plus assistant matrons, kitchen and cleaning staff and a caretaker, who look after between 50 and 60 boarders. Everyone awaits Mr. Hill's proposals - which include a new staff member - with keen interest.
7.
• Friends of Rye Art Gallery will already know that on Saturday a rather special event takes place during the private view of the Matthew Smith exhibition at the Ockman Lane gallery. Dick Merricks will be presenting a sculpted head - the work of Bernard Sindall - of his late wife Phoebe, who did so much for the Rye Art Gallery. She had a vast circle of friends, some of them in no way connected with the world of art; and Phoebe's family will be very glad to see Phoebe's friends on Saturday morning, whether or not they would normally visit the gallery.
• The meeting of the St. Mary's Tuesday Club (East Street, 7.30) on 14 October is, alas, only a very brief joy; it is in fact the final meeting of this small group. The Club was founded nine years ago, the joint brainchild of Peter Carmichael and Barbara Lloyd, as "a social meeting to get people to be friendly and talk to each other and help some of the elderly", Mrs. Lloyd tells us. But finding a speaker every month is proving increasingly difficult, and Mrs. Lloyd and the few remaining members have decided, with reluctance, that the time has come to close the Club.
• The Rye Old Time and Modern Sequence Dancing Club is reopening on 15 October at the FE Centre, meeting from 7.30 to 10 every Wednesday except the second in each month (when the room is not available). Entrance costs 50p, and beginners are very welcome. New leaders are Fred and Jean Hopper. For further information, ring Mr. Sage on Brede 882803; he tells us that he is re-starting the group because so many people have missed it.
• The coffee morning and sale of work on Saturday week, 18th, at the FE Centre is in aid of the East Sussex Fund for the Blind, and is the main annual fundraising event of the small Rye branch. Goods made by local blind people will be on sale, along with plants, books, cakes, bric-a-brac, produce and gifts. Items for sale or raffle should go to Mrs. H. Nelson-Barrett at North Salts or to Mrs. B. Alford at Meadowside, Winchelsea. Donations will also be welcome.
• Also on the 18th, barn-dancers will welcome the visit of the popular Catsfield Steamers to Upper School, where the ATC are organising a dance from 7.30 to 11.45. £3 tickets include refreshments.
• Barn-dancing art-lovers have a choice on the evening of the 18th. Once a year the Trustees of the Rye Art Gallery hold a formal meeting with its Subscribers, and this year it takes place on Saturday week at the Ockman Lane gallery; FRAG members are also welcome. It is expected that there will be an announcement .-about the big appeal which is being launched this winter for improvements to both galleries, and as a lure the committee has arranged for a showing of the two TVS films about arts and crafts in Rye which originally appeared in the "Putting on the South" series. Gallery supporters who missed the films on television - and many missed the first one, which went out a week early - will be glad of the second chance.
A hiccup in the Rye Promotion Group (and not, for once, our typing!) led to four names being left off the list in GAZETTE no. 194, of local traders who had contributed to the advertisement in the 'MCC leaflet. As well as the 45 .businesses on the original list, contributions have come from Barclays Bank, Regent Motel, Swan Cottage, and Linda Gilfrin, the proprietor of the shop we still tend to call Woolgers.
Next week's Landgate WI meeting marks the end of its first year. Membership now stands at 32, and 19 members' children enjoyed the August party on the Salts. Under its craft leader Helen Gray, the Institute gained a very creditable 71 points out of 100 in a county competition held at the Delawarr Pavilion last week,
Lower School's Harvest Festival Assembly on Thursday was conducted by the Ravo C. Hutchinson, who produced for his young audience a neat little parable about William the Conker who grew into William the Conqueror. The usual splendid display of produce on the stage was distributed later to elderly people nominated by pupils.
Thursday, 9th Rye Coin Club AGM, "Seaby Slides" (Ted Wheeler), FEC, 7.30 Council of Churches meeting, Baptist Hall, 7.30 (see below)
Friday, 10th CSRF, "Gold Coins of Old Romance", FEC, 11
"Look After Yourself" (first session, GAZETTE no. 195), FEC, 2
Nat.His.Soc., "Close Encounters of the Badger Kind" (John Goodman), FEC, 7.30
Saturday, 11th Mencap Autumn Fair, FEC, 10 to 12 (stalls include handicrafts, spring bulbs, cakes, toys and Christmas cards and paper)
Fire Brigade jumble sale, Fire Station, 1.30
Tuesday, 14th St. Mary's Tuesday Club, final meeting, 2 East Street, 7.30 Save the Children Fund preliminary meeting, 102 Udimore Road, 8 (anyone welcome, but please phone Rye 222935 first)
Wdnesday, 15th Thrift Shop (handing-in only), Red Cross, 10 to 12 (not 10 to 4 as in Fixtures, which applies only to the selling days)
Community Lunch Group, Clinic, 1 (the Quiet Life Scheme, of particular interest to those who work with the deaf)
Landgate WI, CC, 10.30 (see page 7)
Thomas Peacocke School, 4th-year parents' evening, 6.30.
• Congratulations to Jenny and Andrew Cato of Broad Oak on the birth of their daughter Kirsty Lee on 22 September - a first grand-daughter (and third grandchild) for Rosemary and Barrie Wilkinson of Pottingfield Road.
• The speaker at the Council of Churches meeting on Thursday evening is the Rev. Colin Garwood, who will be talking about running "Songs of Praise" in Bexhill - with, perhaps, an eye on having something similar in Rye?
• The RAF Association's "non-street" collection in Rye raised £236, more than the equally non-street one they were forced to hold last year; they got a lot of sympathy from contributors puzzled to know why they were lurking in private doorways rather than standing boldly on the pavement...!
• Paul Kennard's "Mascotte" is back at Strand Quay for fitting-out work. She is up on the slipway at the Slade's Yard end, likely to be there a fortnight.
• Trains between Ashford and London on Saturday afternoon and Sunday will be subject to delays and diversions owing to work at Staplehurst.
• A lady from St. Leonards, taken to hospital with leg injuries on Sunday aftei-noon when a car mounted the pavement in Cinque Ports Street, was allowed home after treatment.
• Playden Church's Harvest Supper on Saturday was enlivened by the efforts of half-a-dozen Rye Players, plus two parsons (Stephen Ingham and John Bannister)!
• Bob Vincent tells us that he is not a member of the Sports Centre Management Committee (GAZETTE no. 195); the Friends are being asked to send an observer to meetings, and as chairman he was chosen as their first emissary.
• Finally, a fraternal welcome to "The Independent", the new national newspaper which first appeared yesterday. Like the GAZETTE, it was started because the proprietors couldn't find what they wanted among the papers already on offer. The first issue looks extremely impressive, and we venture to wish the paper every success.
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office, published by Mrs. Mary Owen, 2 Cyprus Place, Rye, East Sussex, TN31 7DR (0797 222303), and printed by Cinque Ports Stationers of Rye. News items for inclusion are always welcome - deadline Monday afternoon. The GAZETTE costs 30p weekly and is delivered to subscribers and pick-up points on Wednesday. A few spare copies and back numbers may be available from Cyprus Place. (Copyright Mary Owen 1986)