OUR RYE HARBOUR MEMORIES AND STORIES OF PAST AND PRESENT RESIDENTS OF RYE HARBOUR 2 THE RYE PARTNERSHIP RYE COASTAL HERITAGE PROJECT, 2011 OUR RYE HARBOUR MEMORIES AND STORIES OF PAST AND PRESENT RESIDENTS OF RYE HARBOUR 4 Contents Foreword ....................................................................................................................................................... 7 Julie Downey ................................................................................................................................................. 8 Kathleen Duffy ............................................................................................................................................ 12 Joyce Tugwell .............................................................................................................................................. 16 Peggy Batcheler .......................................................................................................................................... 19 Terry Denham ............................................................................................................................................. 19 Charles Piggott ............................................................................................................................................ 20 6 Foreword So why are people from Rye Harbour known as Harbour Ducks ? This is the question on my lips, but I’m not sure if it’s an insult or not, and the last thing I want to do is upset the group of residents (past and present) who have gathered to share their stories of Rye Harbour with me. Working alongside the enthusiastic Rye Harbour Group , I learned alot about Rye Harbour village, its people and their resilience in the face of adversity, and also learned about the value of a real community bond. There are many other isolated places in England that have grown up round an industry or as an accident of geography, but Rye Harbour is special. Many of these other places have long ago lost their community bond and even their cultural identity, but not Rye Harbour. Incomers are accepted, but tend to be transient, few stay. Many of the residents of Rye Harbour can trace their families back many generations. There are surnames that you hear time and again...Cutting, Head, Downey, Pope, Caister, Milgate, Saunders, Clark, Igglesden, Stonham and Southerden. I am assured there are a few more but these are the names that came up during the course of the project sessions. I have been struck by the deep rooted bond to the village, even with those who had moved into Rye or further afield. Perhaps it is the shared history of the Mary Stanford lifeboat disaster that binds them, or growing up in such a desolate and isolated spot. I hope that you enjoy this brief look into the memories of the Rye Harbour Group. There were three members of the group who do not come from Rye Harbour, but whose contribution to the sessions and this booklet were both welcome and invaluable. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Kate Head for all of her efforts as a volunteer on this project, particularly as a driver. Chrissy Stower – Programme Manager Julie Downey I have always lived in Rye Harbour. My mum, who died recently, was known as Nanny Pat to everyone, she was originally a Caister, an old Rye Harbour family. There are still Caisters in Rye Harbour. My grandfather was Spencer Caister. He was a Long Line Fisherman at Rye Harbour. This meant he was on the shore. He used to peg a long line with hooks along the beach at low tide, and at the next low tide would go back to see what he had caught. He also used to go cockling and shrimping, anything that was done from the shore. My great-grandfather was the youngest skipper to go out from Rye Harbour, and my gran’s brother went down with the Mary Stanford lifeboat. Most of us at the Harbour are connected to each other, where families have intermarried over the generations. I am related to the Downeys, the Caisters and the Popes, and through my husband the Cuttings. My husband’s great-uncle was Arthur Downey and Morris Downey was my great-uncle. Left: The picture shows the Downey family, Nell, Liz, Ethel and Alice with the twins Morris and Albert. Morris would later be lost, along with his cousin Arthur, with the Mary Stanford. Ethel was Julie’s Great- grandmother. They used to keep family Christian names going, so it gets a bit confusing when you are trying to work it all out. There are so many people called by the same name. Elizabeth is a name that has run throughout my family. My mum used to say that she could remember all the crying after the Mary Stanford disaster. She would have been 5 years old at the time. There were only about 150 people who lived in Rye Harbour in 1928, and nearly every family had lost someone. In some cases they had lost more than one. Although there had been other lifeboat 8 disasters, none has ever been as bad as the Mary Stanford, where all 17 of the crew were lost. My great-uncle Morris and my husband’s great-uncle Arthur were both lost in the Mary Stanford. Each year there is a memorial service held for the crew, and representatives from each of the family light a candle for the crew member as his name is called. My mum used to be our family’s representative, but now it is me. Right: Funeral of the crew members of the Mary Stanford, 1928. Far right: Morris and Albert Downey The people of Rye Harbour had alot to cope with. The Mary Stanford disaster took away most of the men who run the fishing fleet from Rye Harbour, but then in 1933 the village was flooded making life even more difficult. Left: The Tram Road during the floods of 1933. Right: Julie in Tram Road today. My dad did his apprenticeship as a shipwright, a boat builder, at Rock Channel in Rye, at Phillips Boatyard. Back in my dad’s day there were alot of boats coming and going from Rye Harbour. After the war my dad took part in the film Dunkirk, with Richard Attenborough. He was part of the flotilla of little boats who rescued the soldiers from the beach. He took a boat over to pick up the actors. My mum and I were in the film too. There is a very brief shot of us sitting in a boat. It goes past so fast if you blink you will miss it. Rye Harbour has changed, even in my lifetime, but from what my mum used to say it was very different in her day. When I was growing up there were no caravan sites, just fields and very few houses. I remember the summers as always being warm and sunny. We used to swim every day and go down to the beach. We used to swim in the river down at the harbour, when I was about 10 years old. We would change in the train carriages. The carriages were disused and had been abandoned for years. As kids we used to play in them all the time. You wouldn’t be allowed to do it now because of health and safety. When I left school I went to work for Webb’s Bakery in Rye. I worked down where the windmill is and also up in the High Street. Now I help my daughter, who lives in Rye Harbour with her children, and also my son, who lives at Winchelsea Beach with his little boy. 10 Kathleen Duffy I come from Rye Harbour although I now live in Rye. My family was a fishing family, the Heads. Both my dad and my uncle Bill were fishermen. My dad worked on the Caister’s boat. My uncle Bill was a quiet man. He was made a prisoner of war by the Japanese. He was writing a book about the Mary Stanford, my brother has it now. My family lost three members in the Mary Stanford lifeboat, my grandfather, Herbert Head, the Coxwain, and two uncles, James and John. My son is an artist and has painted me pictures of the three of them. They hang on my wall at home. My grandfather was only 47 years old at the time and my uncles were teenagers, 19 and 17. They never found John’s body. My mum used to say he was under Camber Sands. My uncle Bill used to tell the story of how on the night of the disaster someone came and told them something was happening on the beach. Gran got them up and off they went. In those days they used to have to run along to the old lifeboat station between Rye Harbour and Winchelsea Beach, and then pull the lifeboat down the beach into the sea. So many people would go, not just the crew. After the Mary Stanford went down the lifeboat was found upside down on the beach. The removal company from Rye, Wright and Pankhurst, who used to have a yard next door to what until recently was The Forge restaurant, were called in to move the boat. Top left: The old lifeboat station as it is today. Right: A lifeboat being pulled down into the sea. Bottom left: Tom Cook, of the Wright and Pankhurst yard. 12 There used to be a school at Rye Harbour, I never went there but my oldest br other did. I had to walk or catch the bus to Rye to go to school. My school was where they are going to build a supermarket now. When we were growing up the people from the Harbour were known as Harbour Ducks and we used to call those from Rye Rye-ites . There are stories of children from Rye Harbour being stoned by children from Rye, to make them go back to the Harbour. During the war the Harbour was a busy and an important place. Our families were not evacuated, but further down the coast they were , to make way for the soldiers . We had alot of soldiers at Rye Harbour . My dad joined the Navy and worked on the minesweepers out of Portsmouth. Most of the fishermen had left and moved down the coast to Fleet, in Hampshire.