The Midsummer Fayre last weekend, June 24, at the East Street Museum featured stalls with books, bric-a-brac and plants, as well as tea, coffee and cakes, and a chance to look at the new display of Rye medieval pottery and a booklet from Jo Kirkham called Rye Royale – Rye in the 1920s produced to celebrate how Rye was when our current long-serving Queen was born.
Entrance to the East Street Museum is free (though donations are welcome) and it is open each weekend (Saturday and Sunday, 10:30-4:30) throughout the summer.
The main Ypres Tower museum nearby behind St Mary’s church is open every day all year round (except certain holidays) from 10:30am to 5pm and more information can be found at www.ryemuseum.co.uk. An addition this year is a new showcase about the Cinque Port Volunteers dating back to the 18th century.
Over the summer a walk around the 15th-century herb garden alongside the Tower can be overwhelming with so many different scents, and an exhibit inside the Tower provides more information about how the various herbs were used in medieval times – both in food and as medicines.
Given that St Mary’s Church just in front of the Tower dates from 1100 and Norman times, the museum has a great deal of local history to draw on – whether invasion was expected at any minute by William the Conqueror, French pirates (who once burnt most of Rye to the ground), Napoleon in the 1800s, or Hitler in the 1940s.
Source: Rye Museum
Photos : Kevin McCarthy and Rye News Library