Whether you want to chill out with Beethoven or warm up with the Rolling Stones, your days of getting Brahms and Liszt in Landgate’s Queens Head may be numbered. The Town Council has nodded through a planning application to turn the historic pub with lettable bedrooms, storage, stables and garage into four cottages, one holiday let and a two storey/commercial property.
This is notwithstanding the pub is hosting both the Piatti Quartet on Sunday September 21st at 8pm for an informal “Beer and Beethoven” visit and the Desert Turkeys at 5pm a week later on Sunday September 28’s “rockin’ original songs and tunes” during Rye Arts Festival. The building appears to be a “town amenity” which hosts everything from auditions for Acting Up In Rye’s panto to the ukele band and monthly “Green Drinks” evenings for local environmentalists. And this Saturday, September 13th, it is hosting the Turpin-Hubbard Trio.
But the last planning application, turned down by Rother District Council, was upheld by the Planning Inspector except for one item – concern about the pub’s “historic fabric” and that was not the pool table. Amenity was not on the Planning Inspector’s agenda as Rye apparently has lots of alternative venues for concerts, events and meetings. These include the Standard, where many meetings have been held in the past, and although it has been off the list for many months it is now reopening (see article).
So the Town Council, who did not meet in August, left it to Town Clerk Richard Farhall to handle the application under agreed delegated authority in their absence, and he has wisely referred it to Rother’s Conservation and Design Officer for approval. Rother, who have a very large backlog of planning applications for approval, may well consider the “historic fabric” again.
In the meantime councillors were not happy about the change of use of an art gallery into a wine bar in West Street as smokers could spill out straight into the road on a corner; and a developer’s suggestion that a new access road in Deadman’s Lane should be called Lancaster Court was not supported as Deadman’s Lane was historic, if not lively.
Photo by Dan Lake