Rain in Rye

Tuesday, 4 June 2019. After a wonderful day in Hastings the previous day we set off in the car from Eastbourne to Rye.

It was one of the Cinque Ports, standing almost surrounded by the sea where three rivers; the Brede, Rother and Tillingham all converge together. Now the sea has receded somewhat, leaving an ancient seaside town clinging to the river channel for access for its fishing fleet.

The weather was not so kind to us today. It fact it was downright nasty... All the photos were taken in rain and once these featured here were taken it became heavy enough to drench us through and the camera went into its camera bag and stayed there sulking. There are some old buildings to be found here and they make Rye a popular tourist destination, notwithstanding the absence of sea and beaches.

Mermaid Street is one of the main draws for tourist attention. A narrow cobbled street set on a steep hill and with quaintly-named buildings along its length.

The Mermaid Inn dates from 1156 and was one of the meeting places for the notorious Hawkhurst Gang of smugglers in the 1730s-40s. They were so sure of their power that they would sit openly with pistols on the table, defying the authorities to move against them. We are not talking about a small group of men here. They regularly seized goods from ships and warehouses with 30-40 armed men riding in the raid. Some extreme violence was used with one victim, an elderly revenue officer, William Galley, being buried alive in a fox den after being beaten. Another, Daniel Chater, was thrown down a well and killed by dropping rocks on him. By the end of the 1740s the authorities had rounded up most of the gang which ceased to exist. At least 75 gang members were hung or deported and of those hung, 14 were gibbeted - their bodies wrapped in chains and left to hang until they had fallen to pieces. Ah, the good old days...

The building opposite the Mermaid Inn is called "The House Opposite"... Another house is called "The House With The Seat". As we reached the foot of the hill the rain took on the challenge of drenching us properly. On a previous visit we had found a museum of music boxes and automata and we decided to try to find it again, but it defeated us, despite some help given in the local Tourist Information, which had a nice little museum of its own upstairs devoted to penny slot arcade machines. These were mostly the animated scene machines such as The Haunted Churchyard, The Hanging, Reading Of The Will etc. Finally we staggered into a small café, flooded the floor with our run-off and had a bit of lunch before heading back to the car and to Eastbourne.

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