Rye Castle Museum held a coffee morning on Saturday March 28 at its East Street site to herald its opening for the summer season. The East Street museum will now be open at weekends and bank holidays between 10:30 am and 5:00 pm and the Ypres Castle site continues to open every day. It is hoped to increase the days the East Street museum is open during the year.
Yvonne Metcalf and Heather Stevenson (left and right in the photo) helped curate a new display showing Rye author EF Benson and his Mapp and Lucia novels. The museum has several items pertaining to EF Benson during the time that he was Mayor of Rye. A display case also shows a recreation of Mapp and Lucia through genuine period costume and a tableau of items, posters and magazines of previous Mapp and Lucia productions to complement the current display at Lamb House, where BBC filming took place last summer. A display board highlights some of the shops that were transformed into 1930s’ Tilling for the filming in 2014. The programmes were shown on BBC 1 at Christmas.
If you have not been to the East Street museum recently, do take a look It is free to enter, but donations are most welcome. The next event is a talk about “Ellen Terry, Star of the Silver Screen”, who lived near Tenterden, on Tuesday April 14 at 7:30pm.
Photo by Ray Prewer