Hearty congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Orford of Cadborough Cliff, who were married at St. Mary's just sixty years ago last Sunday. Mrs. Orford is a Rye girl, an Ashenden; when her father was killed in WW1, her mother gave up their shop and went back to teaching, taking over the little school at the foot of Conduit Hill which had been started by the two Misses Bushby; young Nellie kept house for the family when she was still not sixteen. Later the Ashendens had the toyshop at 88 High Street formerly kept by Miss Shearman. Mr. Orford, who is 85 (his wife is 82) is a West Sussex man, and is proud of having lived through six reigns; he was almost too young for WW1, but served six months in signals with the Royal Engineers. After completing his Post Office training he was sent to Rye for his first job - and retired in 1960 after ten years as our Postmaster. The family did move briefly to Worthing, but returned to Rye when Mrs. Orford's uncle Jack Ashenden offered them one of the new houses he was building up the hill at Cadborough; the move to Cadborough Cliff came later. Mr. and Mrs. 'ford lead a quiet life now; Mrs. Orford is not too well, and Mr. Orford no longer sings in the St. Mary's choir.But they have two daughters and three grandchildren, and there was a very enjoyable family lunch at the Flackley Ash Hotel on Sunday - and the house is full of cards and presents and flowers, Mrs. Orford tells us, sent to celebrate this very happy Diamond anniversary.
Two weddings graced St. Mary's on Saturday.Unexpectedly, the weather held; scarlet carnations abounded, vivid in the buttonholes of the white suits worn by many of the men; and lots of well-behaved small children were anchored firmly to their mothers, though doubtless discipline was relaxed later. The bells seemed to be ringing almost all afternoon.
Pauline Cutting of King's Avenue looked beautiful in white lace for her marriage to Chris Wood of Pottingfield Road. She was attended by three small bridesmaids - her sister Charmain, Michaele Elphick and Caroline Holloway; Mrs. Barbara Wood made their peach satin dresses. Chris's best man was Jim Bedwell. An honoured guest was Pauline's great-grandmother, Mrs. Murphy, who is 32 but had flown from Australia specially for the occasion; although she was in a wheelchair, Mrs. !;aLnnhy clearly felt it was well worth the journey. The reception was at the laity Centre, and the honeymoon will be spent at Tenby. Pau line is manageress at Playden Oasts, and Chris works at Jemrsons at Peasmarsh.
Vicky Reynolds, whose family comes from Hawkherst, was the second bride of the afternoon. She wore a delightful white crinoline dress, the flounced skirt falling into a short train, for her wedding to Shaun Mitchell of Udimore Road. She was attended by a friend from Hawkhurst as well as Shaun's cousin Amanda Teague and neighbour Kelly Parsons, in cream and apricot silk dresses with flower wreaths and mixed bouquets. Shaun's brother Nicky was best man. The reception was held at Thomas Peacocke Upper School, and all the catering was done beforehand at the Udimore Road house - though Mrs. Mitchell looked quite unscathed by the experience! The honeymoon will be spent touring.
Awestruck congratulations to Ian Turner, 22, of Thomas Peacocke School and Winchelsea Beach, who has crowned his three years at Cambridge with a First in Natural Science. Ian, who is primarily interested in botanical studies, hopes to go on to Linacre College at Oxford in October to read for a D.Phil. (subject, his mother tells us, to being able to wring a grant out of someone). But he is spending his summer vacation mingling work with pleasure, first in France and later in Jamaica where he will be studying the local flora rather than lying on the beach.After just one term at Oxford he expects to go abroad again, to work on a field project in Malaysia, where he will be attached to Penang University.
2.
Mrs. Alice Polley, of Cooper Road, died peacefully in hospital on 2 June. She was 79, and had always lived in Rye. A grandmother and great-grandmother, Mrs.Polley leaves three sons and three daughters; she and her husband Mr. Stanley Polley had been looking forward to celebrating their diamond wedding next month.
Miss Phyllis Crocker, of Saltcote Place, died in hospital on 9 June. Miss Crocker was the sister of Mrs. Barbara Whelpton, of Trader's Passage.
On Friday Rye showed its sorrow at the death of its Rector's wife when parishioners, friends, local clergy and churchwardens from the parishes in the Rye Group met in St. Mary's for the funeral service. Ramon Remedios, who has links with the town, sang most movingly an aria from Verdi's Requiem; bell-ringers from Thomas Peacocke School rang a half-muffled quarter-peal after the service. Mrs. Barbara Maundrell, who was 63, was born in Malaya, where her father had a government post, but spent rich of her childhoedwith her grandmother in Brightling. She came from a clerical family on her mother's side. Serving in the WRNS during the war, she was stationed at Southwick House at the hub of the events which built up to D-Day. Canon and Mrs. Maundrell came to Ickiesham from Winchester in the early 1970s, and it was then that she started work as a part-time nursing auxiliary at St. Helen's Hospital. Her nine years spent working in the geriatric wards there gave her ern great joy and satisfaction, and it was with regret that she retired just before her nintieth birthday when her husband accepted the living of St. Mary's in January 1982. In Rye irs. Maundrell was secretary of the local branch of the Church of England Children's Society (to which donations in her memory may be sent c/o Knowle House, Mermaid Street); she was a member of Rye WI, and also for a time the local secretary of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. As well as her husband David, Mrs. Maundrell leaves her son John, daughter Katharine (Mrs. Graham Firman) and small grand-daughter Caroline.
Roger Breeds has had a charming letter from Fred Hunziker, the Mayor of Rye (New York), thanking the Council and the town for its hospitality during his party's recent vacation in this country - it was, he said, the highlight of their visit. "Everyone we met in Rye made our attendance at the Mayor Making cereneny a great Pleasure. The traditions of the ceremony are something we simply don't have in the United States.They add a great deal to local government and hopefully will never be permitted to be forgotten."The Rye pottery vase and other gifts he received are to be placed in the City Hall. "Our visit to your Rye has generated much interest on the part of many of our citizens in visitins there", he adds, hope they will enjoy themselves as much as we did." We hope so too.
People who haven't used Hastings Station recently will be pleased to find a new look in the vast foyer. Smart red metal benches round" the walls have now joined the circular scarlet seats. The doors, which were always a menace to encumbered travellers, now slide open and shut by magic. The plant tubs are still there, but now the central area is covered with carpet, and in the very middle is a shiny new information kiosk - dispensing publicity leaflets, etc., rather than timetable information which is still available at the window beside the ticket office.
We stood admiring it. What have you got on Rye, we asked its guardian? He looked apologetic. Its Town Model, we suggested, its Museum? Absolutely nothing. And it isn't as if we had no railway station!
Since Rother is responsible for our tourist promotion, we contacted David Cranston, who took a batch of leaflets over to Hastings yesterday. We also pointed out the deficiency to Ashford Station; they also have an information kiosk now, and have promised to make sure that Rye's publicity material is available from it.It is, after all, to BR's benefit as well as Rye's that visitors should make use of our en:.7.hantingly pretty railway line.
Two fire engines and an ambulance raced into the High Street on Wednesday morning as smoke billowed from the flat behind the Eastbourne Mutual Building Society office. However, it turned out to be only a minor kitchen disaster, and the elderly lady living in the flat convinced the ambulance men that there was no need for them to worry about her.
Another nasty moment came on Sunday morning at 8.20 when the sound of the All Clear siren rolled across Rye. Was this, we asked ourselves blearily, a four-minute warning - or were the firemen's bleepers out of action? In fact it was neither; the bleepers which took over from the fire siren (the old All Clear) more than a dozen years ago were working perfectly, but there was no fire - though several fire-men did rush round to the station in case. Police suggested that the signal might have been connected with a Civil Defence exercise going on elsewhere in the county; we were told that the Broad Oak siren went off at the same time. The firemen's only outing at the weekend was to remove a dangerous hanging sign at a local pub.
While discussions about its permanent home continue, the Day Centre has quietly progressed to its next immediate aim, a second session. The Centre now opens on Tresdays as well as Wednesdays, and Tuesday will be the day when new members are u come - the Wednesday group preferred to stay as they were, which means that Wednesdays are still full.
Co-ordinator for Tuesdays is Win Allen, of Udimore Road, and both Miss Allen and Mrs. Wild will be very glad of offers of help for the extra session; drivers, caterers and just general chatters-up will all be very welcome.
George Roberts of the SWA asks us to say how grateful he is to New Road and King's Avenue residents for their tolerance during the past fortnight of the din made by the big crane working on the river bank by Monkbretton Bridge. He has had no complaints at all, and he does appreciate that the noise must have been very trying. The crane was busy strengthening the bank, which was in a bad condition and could have led to trouble for houses nearby. The work is not yet finished but, he says, the noisy part is.
Dredging at the Strand is going ahead according to schedule, with another two or three weeks' work still to do.We asked Mr. Roberts if they had found anything interesting, but he pointed out that what they are removing is merely the mud cas' yca7E: and not the silt of centuries.
This mud is now being taken to Pett and buried under the shingle to stop water seeping through to the land behind; but for a week it was dumped in the new wader pool at the Nature Reserve, and Anne Yates tells us that this is now well covered with a base which should keep the water in. With the help of a generator (since the electricity is not yet installed owing to complications about crossing the road) they are hoping to pump in the water from the new Well before the mud dries out too much.
Charles Guest, elder son of Janet and Denis Guest of Watchbell Street, is the skipper of a millionaire's luxury yacht. Recently, two days out from Bermuda en route for the Azores, he was asked by a plane to look out for a life-raft some 20 miles off. He found the raft and its occupants, whose own boat had sunk, and returned them safely to dry land: three Frenchmen and an English skipper - born and brought up in Lydd and with two years of working from Rye on the "John's Model":
A correspondent points out something which may be of use to those who travel on a Senior Citizen's railcard.On day return fares these cards still give a 50% discount, but only 34% on longer journeys. Our reader was travelling to stay with friends living some way out on the far side of London; and he discovered that it was cheaper to buy half-price day returns in two stages both ways (four in all) than one ordinary return ticket with one-third off. So check your options before buying your ticket for a long journey.
4.
When the Rye Bookshop ceased to exist, there ceased with it the commercial outlet for the greetings cards which Mrs. Viola Bayley recycles in aid of the Church of England Children's Society. This loss has now been replaced in part: on Thursdays, from 10.30 to 12.30 and 2.30 to 4.30, the cards will normally be available from the bookstall in St. Mary's Church. They are, of course, also on sale at the Society's coffee mornings, etc., and Mrs. Bayley gets through an enormous number in the course of a year - mostly Christmas cards, of course, but also birthday cards (of which she Sold 1500 last year) and those suitable for miscellaneous greetings. Even if you normally send yours to Hill House or give them to your children to cut up, you might feel like rescuing the rather special ones - because Mrs. Bayley would be particularly glad of them for this admirable work. Just put them through the letter-box at Norman House in West Street.
The Arthritis & Rheumatism Council's recent flag-day resulted in E266 for the appeal, plus a further £83 from the house-to-house collection in the town. The branch's next event is a coffee morning at Fair Oak, Fair Meadow, on Wednesday 10 July from 10.30 to 12. A more elaborate ARC fund-raising adventure touched briefly at Rye on Saturday, when two young canoeists spent the night at Rye Harbour on their way round mainland Britain by paddle. Aged 22 and 21, the man and girl left Tynenouth on 15 April and canoed down the east coast; their next port of call after the Harbour was to be Eastbourne, and they reckoned the whole trip would take four months.A coastguard cutter shepherded them through the congested shipping lanes of the Dover Straits, and they are being passed on from one coastguard station to the next right round the country. ARC secretary Francis Barrett has promised to let us know how the whole adventure turns out.
The GAZETTE has received a long and extremely interesting letter from Mrs. Joyce Eames, now living in Hitchin. At the outbreak of WW2, Mrs. Eames was 16, and was still Joyce Hicks, the daughter of Gilbert Kicks, dairy farmer in Dumbwoman's Lane. She tells us a great deal about wartime life in the town, which we shall be passing on to readers in due course. But in view of last week's filming in Market Street as it might have looked in the Thirties, it seems appropriate now to record how things were in 1939 for a 16-year-old working in a Rye shop.
Young Joyce was employed at Hide Bros (now Freight-Express and briefly "Short Brothers"). Tuesday was early closing, so she worked from 8.30 to 1; Mondays, Wednesdayn and Thursdays it was 8.30 to 6; on Friday the shop stayed open until ""'s, 7, and on Saturday until 3 - and often enough Joyce didn't finish work until 9, - r'ince an elderly spinster in the town made a habit of phoning a request to see goods (hats, nerhans, or underwear) on approval after the errand boy finished work at 7, and Joyce was the only other employee with a bike…She adds that the old lady rarely if ever bought anything; she just wanted someone to chat to. For this 49-hour week (assuming an hour off for lunch each day) she was paid all of five shillings, less elevenpence for insurance stamps!
(When war broke out and the men on her father's farm went into the army, Joyce Hicks left Hides to work on the farm; as soon as she was 17 and allowed to drive, she took over the milk round, serving some 300 houses in Udimore, Rye and Rye Harbour with the help of a lad, and selling the milk "loose" measured out of a can.)
Doris Henley got a job at Freeman Hardy a couple of years later; she was only 14, but the older girls had zone to the war. They finished at 7-on Saturdays (not that there was much trade on winter evenings, with no shop windows lit and the entrances swathed in black-out curtains). She zot 7/6d a week, probably because the rates were set nationally for the FHW chain; but from that the very fierce manageress saw to it that she put 6d a week into savings - collected by Mrs. Ellis from the ironmongers, who called all along the High Street every Monday.
And this, remember, was leas than fifty years ago!
New owner of Rye Wholefoods in the Landgate is Jill Stevens from Iden; Pat Bonham has gone back to full-time work as a free-lance editor. He tells us that Rye Wholefoods grew directly out of the Harvest Wholefood Club, started in 1977 by Sally Greenhalf at her house in Military Road. She kept a limited range of bulk goods and friends used to call in and buy them by the pound. Before le.g, however, the sacks (not to mention the peanut butter!) threatened to take over the entire living room, and in April 1979 Sally sold the stock to Mary and Pat Bonham, them in Rope Walk. Demand continued unabated, and they eventually decided that what Rye needed was a proper wholefood shop, though the only freehold premises they could then afford were rather out-of-town, along Winchelsea Road (the old Smeatons Stores). And so Rye Wholefoods began in June 1982 - a dreadfully inauspicious start, says Pat, as the very first customer did not appear until 10.30 am! But trade grew steadily, and August 1984 saw the move to Landgate, at last relieving many tired feet. Pat and Mary would like to thank all their customers for their support over the past six years. Nationally, Pat adds, the wholefoode business has really mushroomed in the 1980s (he used to drive a van up to the London warehouses, but everything is delivered now), but what have not changed are the euslity of the foods and the personal service. Pat and Mary are confident that terse are in good hands; Jill will be running the shop on much the same lines a following the same ethical principles - no artificial colourings, and the absolute minimum of preservatives and sugar.
The current list includes two applications for Cadborough Farm: the conversion in principle of an oasthouee to a dwelling with a garage, and outline permission for the erection of four detached houses and garages to replace three existing cottages. ' Mrs. Hacking tells us that the four houses would in effect form a continuation of the cul-de-sac at the top of Cadborough Cliff, while the oast conversion would provide a larger house.
The list also includes revised plans for the new entrance foyer for the Baptist Church. When the church members considered the tenders received for the original design, which received planning permission some time ago, they felt that they were really not justified in spending on a building the sort of money which is so desperately needed elsewhere in the world. The new plans are simpler and more in keeping with the original structure, Stuart Davison tells us; the ston from the steps will still be used in the new entrance.
Tarquin Cole says that the application for a hanging sign (not internally illuminated, but simply spotlit after dark) at the Old Brewery in Wish Ward eriginated from requests from neighbours at the Strand, who are always being asked to direct people there! Designed by his sister Tina (and hung at top-floor level), it has a border of painted rather than real tiles - it would he very unfortunate if a real one fell off onto someone's head - around the Rye Tiles wording.
The lunch-time train (1.40) from Hastings last Wednesday failed to run for lack of a guard, which meant that the return journey from Ashford also disappeared - a considerable inconvenience for at least one elderly traveller from London who had to sit cm the platform there for an extra hour. We queried the position with the Traffic Yanager's office at Ashford, who told us that if a guard fails to turn up at short notice they do try to find a replacement in time; but this is not always possible, and once the normal departure time has passed the train simply has to be cancelled rather than confuse everyone by running perhaps half-an-hour late.
Several years ago the Editor was waiting for that same train at Hastings in company with a pleasant stranger.The train failed to appear; and the pleasant stranger arose in her wrath and insisted that the station-master provide her with a taxi. She got one, toe; she was the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and without her presence a wedding due to take place at 2.30 in one of Rye's unlicensed churches would have been illegal!
6.
Ninety years ago next month the Camber tram made its first appearance just over Monkbretton Bridge. This endearing little line of just one-and-a-half miles was in fact a light railway, though a legal technicality at the time precluded the use of the term. It was opened officially on 13 July 1895, in the presence of everyone who was anyone in Rye at the time.It closed to the public at the outbreak of WW2, after some years of financial decline; the Admiralty was glad of it during the war to carry materials for the new jetty on the Camber side of the harbour, but in 1947 the land over which it ran was returned to Rye Town Council and there is now nothing left except the Golf Links station building and some odd stretches of rail.
Just published - and available now from Adams and shortly also from the Museum, price 'a',1.50 - is a thoroughly comprehensive history of "The Rye and Camber Tramway" written by Peter A. Harding, of Woking. We won't spoil readers' pleasure by quoting from it, since everything in the liook will be of great interest to those who remember the tram (or who wish they could). Mr. Harding's bibliOgraphy at the end of the 32-p:ge booklet shows how much trouble he has gone to over researching many of his sources are from railway literature, but he also refers to the September 1969 issue of "Rye's Own", and to Denis Vidler's recent history of the Golf Club.
Indeed, the Golf Club, which had opened the previous year, was the prime reason for the construction of the line. But as well as the golfers, it was used later by tourists seeking the sands, and also by the Rye Harbour community in general, who until the early 1950s could cross the river by means of the little ferry which rowed across at high tide from the steps at the end of the jetty. Mr. Earding tells his readers that in 1895 an annual season ticket costing 30s was available to cover the whole crew of a fishing-boat, while ordinary travellers Paid 6d return first class and 4d second. (Benson readers will remember that Major Flint and his golfing partner Captain Puffin were regular users of the tram in the 1930s - how sad it couldn't figure in the television series!)
As well as providing a text full of meat and readable with it, Mr. Harding has found plenty of fascinating illustrations, many of them (as far as we know) not familiar to Rye people. Steam-engine addicts will find lots of technical detail, but the book is a most valuable addition to the town's local history archive and we thoroughly recommend buying rather than borrowing it if possible. In any case, do read it - it will be a sure way of reviving enjoyable memories for those who were children here before the war.
Several months ago Mrs. Pam Sayell at The Ice Box showed us a Falklands Islands stamp commemorating "Camber Railway 1919 to 1927". She was pueied; so were we. So, later, was Pat Cole of the East Sussex News, who investigated - and'am interesting article in a recent issue of that paper is accompanied by pictures of the four stamps which make up the set, new in February of this year. Pat has passed on to the GAZETTE a few more details which she was zot able to include in her article, and we would be pleased to give them to those who know the area behind Port Stanley which the goods-only narrow-gauge railway served Nothing is now left of it except a few sections of track, and a couple of Wren locomotives found under a pile of scrap. (Compare this sad story with the last sentence of the paragraph at the top of the page!)
But why Camber, for goodness' cake? John Smith of Ferry Road was stationed in the Falklands during WW2, and we asked if he knew. He recalls that in his day a certain shallow part of the harbour at Port Stanley was called the Camber, and it was this part which had been served by the railway - so, logically enough, the Camber Railway. Our dictionary gives various definitions of "camber", all connected with curves or slopes, so it seems likely that the harbour area was named for this reason and had no direct connection with Camber village - unless, of course, someone knows otherwise? Mr. Smith refers us to an article in the March issue of "Railway Magazine" and a letter and ptotograph in the May issue - the photographer having been stationed with him in the Falklands in the 1940s!
7.
• Rother has been concerned for some time about the position of the Bexhill Museum, whose curator died early last year; the Council is not only that Museum's land lord but also the owner of many of its exhibits. It was felt that the Museum needed professional guidance, but there were no funds to pay a full-time curator. An arrangement has now been reached, subject to final ratification, with Hastings to appoint an Assistant Museums Curator whose salary and working time will be split 50:50 between the two Councils. Rother's half of his/her services would be available for museums in the area generally, though the immediate need is for help at Bexhill.
• Congratulations to Paul and Anne Davies, of East Street, whose first baby Dominic Paul was born on 4 July, two weeks early. Mr. Davies took over the East Street dental practice when Roy Smith, who is now living in Watchbell Street, retired earlier this year. The Davies come from Hertfordshire, and were amused to find that they had trained at_ethe same hospitals as Richard and Joy Mockett respectively; they love Rye, Anne says - everyone is so friendly.
• We are very glad to report that Alan Dickinson, of New England Lane, Le Fevre Wood & Royle, and the Local History Group, heard on Saturday that he has passed part I of his Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors examination (Building, Surveying Division). Alan drives 58 miles weekly to Erith in Kent on the day-release course; he has another two years of studying for parts II and III of the examination plus a year's project work, but then hopes to become a full-blown chartered surveyor.
• In the window of Mary Lestocq's Studio in Market Road is a cup, plus the photograph which won it 'en the Portraiture class of the British Institute of Professional Photographers' Sussex Region competition last week.The picture now goes on to the annual national contest held in September. Subject of the portrait is Humphrey Lestocq's daughter Patricia - the hats bear witness to her career as a very successful milliner in New York.
• Yet more congratulations, this time to tae young men - one of them very young who have just been accepted, subject to final formalities, to join the RAF in September. Marcus Hamilton, of Udimore Road, Hamilton Furnishings and the George Hotel, is one of them; the other is Matthew Paine, living a few doors away in West Undercliff and still at Thomas Peacocke School.
• In reply to our enquiry for recent Ryers, Mrs. Gill, of the Old Bricl:yard, tells us that her son David was born in the town in 1974, rather at the tail-end of the system under which most second and third confinements took place at home. No-one _s offered us a later home birth, though we hear of a baby from a Flayden family which was born in last February's bitter cold within the town boundaries - somewhere near the Tollgate Garage, its mother thinks, but she and the ambulance man were hardly concerned with the finer points of geography at the time!
• A car parked in the restricted no-parking area of Church Square nearly caused a real problem on Monday morning. A lorry which had made a delivery to the Hope Anchor found it could not get out of Watchbell Street; and it was blocking the arrival of the hearse, due to be outside St. Anthony's Church when a funeral emerged. The lorry-driver and his mate had already tried "bumping" the heavy car sideways, without success; but the strong arms of the hearse's attendants enabled all six men to shtft the obstruction further onto the pavement, and everyone eventually got past. Astonishingly, the springer spaniel in the back of the bouncing car registered absolutely no protest at all - maybe it felt too seasick to care!
• The Lucia story now being filmed (they hope to finish y the end of this week) is an amalgam of episodes from "Lucia's Progress" (confusingly published in America as "The Worshipful Lucia") and "Troutb1e for Lucia", the final story. A local Paper is part of the action in each book - the "Hastings Chronicle" in the first and the Hamphire Argus", or rather its Tilling office, in the second. Could it therefore be an unsolicited testimonial that lettering in the windows of Chequer identifies it briefly as the office of the "Tilling Gazette"? We like to think so!
Civil Service Retirement Fellowship coffee morning, FEC, 11
Ambulance Social Club Boot Fair, Salts, 10 to 5 Rye Boat Auction, Market, 10
NSPCC Summer Fair, FEC, 10.30 to 3.30
Playscheme jumble sale, CC, 11
Choir of Northbourne Park School, St. Mary's, 6.30 (evensong) Ryesingers and Madrigalia concert, Methodist Church, 8
SUBSCRIPTIONS (£2.75 for 11 issues) are due before the and of this month for those who pay quarterly: cheques payable to THE RYE GAZETTE, or cash in an envelope with your name and address or pick-up point on it, please.
• We do apologise for having given last week the wrong date for Bishop Peter's informal evening at the Methodist Church; it is in fact on Thursday, 27 June.
• Don't forget Channel 4's programme at 6.30 on Monday about the Shell exhibition, filmed at the Rye Art Gallery (GAZETTE no. 132).
• Mrs. Hilda Nelson-Barratt appeals for helpers for the RNIB/East Sussex Association for the Blind house-to-house collection (24 to 29 June) and flag-day on Saturday, 29th. Her tiny committee is always remarkably successful with its fund-raising, but only because the members depend on outside help for special events like this! If you can spare even one hour, please contact Mrs. Nelson-Barratt at North Salts.
• A reader is looking for a dressmaker to make up one si7ee_ dress for a bridesmaid (adult), for a wedding towards the end of July; please phone in the evening if you can help her.
• Bowls: Rye lost to two more-experienced sides at the weekend, both matches played away: winners were the Observer, St. Leonards, on Saturday, and Sidley tartlets on Sunday.
• Rye Playgroup needs a playgroup assistant to replace Mrs. Pat Bell, who has left to take up other work; they will miss her very much, since her experience stretches back before most of the present committee were connected with the popular group now meeting beside the Clinic in Ferry Road. The hours are flexible and could be morning or afternoon, and there is a small salary. Applications, in writing please, should be handed in at the playgroup.
• Mrs. Scammell at the Town Hall asks us to say that notices of Town Council meetings (including committees) are posted a few days beforehand on the Town Hall notice-board, and give the times of meetings - which do not appear in Fixtures though the dates do.
• Rye Harbour lifeboat went out at the weekend to escort into the river a dismasted 8-metre catamaran which had, Mary Lestocq is assured, recently been launched by Princess Margaret! The boat, with a crew of four, was on passage from its builders on Canvey Island to an exhibition at the Brighton Marina, and urgent repairs were taking place at the Harbour on Sunday.
• Prompt action by a Winchelsea Beach resident led to the rescue of a swan which had somehow got itself trapped in a sluice there. He contacted the SWA's emergency weekend staff, who released the bird back to the bosom of its family - no mean task, we would think, given a large, scared and angry swan!
• Geoffrey Bateman has been busy with his researches into the St. Mary's visitors' book again. There were 7,106 signatures in the past six months, and he specifies those who did not "sign in English": 802 Germans, 303 French, 264 Dutch, 104 Welsh (!), plus some thirty other languages - and this, as he says, in the town'sboff-season. (We would expect there to have been lots of Americans, too.)
THE RYE GAZETTE is registered as a newspaper with the Post Office, and publishedbby 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 Squirrels, 9-13 Cinque Ports Street, and back numbers from Cyprus Place. (Copyright Mary Owen 1985)