Rye Town Walk - Tuesday 18th January 2011

This is the Land Gate

We had a beautiful day, cold but bright and sunny; we have been so lucky on our walks so far. Jill, the day's leader, had a number of guide books dating from 1950's - 1970's, which gave us really interesting information.

Note the pestle and mortar, above what used to be the Apothecary. (Well, it still is but it serves coffee now.)

The Church in the centre of Rye (don't miss the water cistern, although the photos of it were rather dull, hence not included!) Also here is the sign for Fletcher's house, Fletcher being (as no doubt you all know) one of the most successful dramatists of the early 17th century. A collaborator with Shakespeare, most famously on Henry VIII, he succeeded the Bard as house playwright for the King’s Men. Fletcher also had a long-running writing partnership with Francis Beaumont, with whom, on one account, he lived in scandalously close quarters on Bankside, with “one wench in the house between them”.

The house with the crooked chimney, Rye.

In EF Benson's tales of Lucia and Miss Mapp, Lucia lived in Lamb House, behind this house. In one of his books, there was much debate by these characters who were painting this scene, whether to paint the chimney as it is - crooked - and have people who did not know the area think one had got it wrong, or to paint it straight, in the knowledge that people from Rye would know it should be crooked.