We had a fairly late breakfast and pottered around until it was time to go to a local carvery, where we were to meet Beryl’s daughter, Sue, her husband, Tony, and their little girls, Emily and Lucy, for lunch. We had a delicious meal, with all the roast vegetables and a mushroom Wellington for me and a Brie and asparagus tart for Keith. After lunch we all returned to Beryl’s for berry topped sponge cakes for dessert, and some tea and coffee. Uncle Stefan was a great success with the little girls, playing hide and seek and being impossible to find in the outside rubbish bin. We remembered all the best hiding spots from our children’s games and assisted the girls to disappear when it was Stefan’s turn to count. I also played some board games with the girls and it was a great chance to get to know them and to discover what delightful and loving children they are. Sue and Tony were very loving and supportive parents with them, so it is no surprise that the girls are so happy and really fun to be with. Beryl is the sort of grandma who has fun; she enjoys her grandchildren’s company, remembers who likes strawberries and who likes raspberries, yet insists on fair play, kindly dealing with frustrations in games.
Sue and family went home late in the afternoon and we set off on a journey of history and landscape. We were in the land of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – always remembered by me by saying, ‘arold with an arrow in is eye at astings’ – the crucial battle in which King Harold was defeated and William of Normandy became King William I of England. Poor Harold had already been battle weary from defeating his own brother, who was making an attempt at the throne in the North. He had disbanded his armies, most of whom were not regulars and were needed at home to bring in the harvest. News reached him of the opportunistic William’s approach, so he quickly gathered some forces and marched south. The English lined up on the high ground and William, not only attacks at harvest time but is tricky enough to break the stalemate by rushing his archers up to the English soldiers, lined up in a ‘defence’ wall. They pretend to run away and when the soldiers in the wall chase them, they turn and cut them to pieces. Not only Harold, but 60% of Anglo-Saxon nobility was killed in that battle. The infra-structure, such as castles and major buildings, previously in wood, were re-built in stone by the Normans. Pevensey was actually the first point of landing for the invasion, being only 20 to 25 miles across the Channel from Normandy.
We stopped at Rye, a hill top town in a sea of marshes, which are good for fattening sheep on in summer, but which are inundated in winter. When Beryl and her husband had their farm, they took such sheep for winter agistment. One night a sheep fell through the ice of a frozen pond and by the time they found it in the morning, the foxes had already made a meal of it. Some belted Galloway cattle, their white belts sparkling against their black flanks, were posing for photos in a meadow beside the road. We parked and walked up the cobbled streets into the heart of the town. It is so full of medieval buildings in good repair and still in use that it was amusing to see that ‘Simon the Pieman’ was proudly claiming to be the oldest tearooms in Rye, having been started in 1920.
The Parish church of Mary the Virgin crowned the hill, with its grassy yard full of tombstones so eroded that it was impossible to make out the inscriptions on many. A magnificent Rowan tree, full of clusters of red berries, grew in the yard and showed us what the one we had planted for our son, Rohan, would have looked like, had it thrived.
It was a wonderful surprise to come across the ‘Rye Shakespeare Company’ in the middle of an open air and very much tongue in cheek performance of ‘The ‘orrible ‘istory of the Wiper Tower’, which claimed to include some history, many insults and traces of nuts. During the play Queen Victoria learnt of the political scandals at Rye in the 1850s when it seemed that the French and English were a pragmatic lot who laundered their money and a lot more besides in each other’s countries. Arriving near the end, we saw a regal Victoria deal with Napoleon and other public figures, some of whom seemed to have been spying under the disguise of being Morris dancers. I behaved like a groupie and had my photo taken with Queen Victoria, learning that the players are amateurs who like to have fun and bring a bit of history to life. My head was whirling with possibilities for our Inverleigh Historical Society, although we would probably not have quite such juicy historical events to play with if we kept it local or true.
We passed the building that had been gifted to the town as a free grammar school for boys in 1638 by Thomas Peacocke, used up until 1908 when a new school was built. We have often wondered about general literacy and education at different eras, with the power of the church and of employers and the landed gentry often hinging on a fairly ignorant general population.
Eastbourne was a splendid Victorian seaside Mecca, with guest houses lining every street, and gardens, including a floral carpet garden, signalling wealth and care for the surrounds. It contrasted with Hastings, partly because we saw Eastbourne in full light and then Hastings in the amber haze of an artificially lit early evening, but mostly because the part of Hastings we were in, along the shore, was very much a fishing community tied to its roots. We walked along beside a line of tall, black net shops, unique to Hastings, which were used to store and dry fishing gear. Nets and ropes had to be dried well, since they were made of natural fibres like cotton, which would rot if left damp. Their shape was determined by the lack of space between the cliff and the sea and the need to squeeze a lot in, but since Victorian times, a bit more land has been reclaimed and they are no longer right next to the shore. The whole town is in the valley between two hills and has had a mixed history, with many periods when it was not considered to be very salubrious and others when social problems were imported by government policies of housing poor people in ghettos there.
We visited Sue and family, who were watching an alarmingly hypnotic program which followed the fortunes of the ‘Britain’s strongest Man’ competition. They had all eaten so we ate our chips and pizza as we watched. The girls were put to bed, with Stefan failing so dismally as chief settler that, when we left about an hour later, they were still in fine form enough for me to go up and have a lengthy ‘goodbye’ chat. They really were the sweetest little girls, only a year apart, different as could be and both so open and friendly.
We were to leave the next day, so we spent some time looking at Beryl’s photos and talking family again, always an interesting topic and one where we really appreciate all the hard work Keith’s brother, Allan, has put into contacting everyone and bringing all the research together.
Stefan demonstrating the size of the cheeses on display in a small shop in RyeSue and family went home late in the afternoon and we set off on a journey of history and landscape. We were in the land of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – always remembered by me by saying, ‘arold with an arrow in is eye at astings’ – the crucial battle in which King Harold was defeated and William of Normandy became King William I of England. Poor Harold had already been battle weary from defeating his own brother, who was making an attempt at the throne in the North. He had disbanded his armies, most of whom were not regulars and were needed at home to bring in the harvest. News reached him of the opportunistic William’s approach, so he quickly gathered some forces and marched south. The English lined up on the high ground and William, not only attacks at harvest time but is tricky enough to break the stalemate by rushing his archers up to the English soldiers, lined up in a ‘defence’ wall. They pretend to run away and when the soldiers in the wall chase them, they turn and cut them to pieces. Not only Harold, but 60% of Anglo-Saxon nobility was killed in that battle. The infra-structure, such as castles and major buildings, previously in wood, were re-built in stone by the Normans. Pevensey was actually the first point of landing for the invasion, being only 20 to 25 miles across the Channel from Normandy.We stopped at Rye, a hill top town in a sea of marshes, which are good for fattening sheep on in summer, but which are inundated in winter. When Beryl and her husband had their farm, they took such sheep for winter agistment. One night a sheep fell through the ice of a frozen pond and by the time they found it in the morning, the foxes had already made a meal of it. Some belted Galloway cattle, their white belts sparkling against their black flanks, were posing for photos in a meadow beside the road. We parked and walked up the cobbled streets into the heart of the town. It is so full of medieval buildings in good repair and still in use that it was amusing to see that ‘Simon the Pieman’ was proudly claiming to be the oldest tearooms in Rye, having been started in 1920.
The Parish church of Mary the Virgin crowned the hill, with its grassy yard full of tombstones so eroded that it was impossible to make out the inscriptions on many. A magnificent Rowan tree, full of clusters of red berries, grew in the yard and showed us what the one we had planted for our son, Rohan, would have looked like, had it thrived.It was a wonderful surprise to come across the ‘Rye Shakespeare Company’ in the middle of an open air and very much tongue in cheek performance of ‘The ‘orrible ‘istory of the Wiper Tower’, which claimed to include some history, many insults and traces of nuts. During the play Queen Victoria learnt of the political scandals at Rye in the 1850s when it seemed that the French and English were a pragmatic lot who laundered their money and a lot more besides in each other’s countries. Arriving near the end, we saw a regal Victoria deal with Napoleon and other public figures, some of whom seemed to have been spying under the disguise of being Morris dancers. I behaved like a groupie and had my photo taken with Queen Victoria, learning that the players are amateurs who like to have fun and bring a bit of history to life. My head was whirling with possibilities for our Inverleigh Historical Society, although we would probably not have quite such juicy historical events to play with if we kept it local or true.We passed the building that had been gifted to the town as a free grammar school for boys in 1638 by Thomas Peacocke, used up until 1908 when a new school was built. We have often wondered about general literacy and education at different eras, with the power of the church and of employers and the landed gentry often hinging on a fairly ignorant general population.Eastbourne was a splendid Victorian seaside Mecca, with guest houses lining every street, and gardens, including a floral carpet garden, signalling wealth and care for the surrounds. It contrasted with Hastings, partly because we saw Eastbourne in full light and then Hastings in the amber haze of an artificially lit early evening, but mostly because the part of Hastings we were in, along the shore, was very much a fishing community tied to its roots. We walked along beside a line of tall, black net shops, unique to Hastings, which were used to store and dry fishing gear. Nets and ropes had to be dried well, since they were made of natural fibres like cotton, which would rot if left damp. Their shape was determined by the lack of space between the cliff and the sea and the need to squeeze a lot in, but since Victorian times, a bit more land has been reclaimed and they are no longer right next to the shore. The whole town is in the valley between two hills and has had a mixed history, with many periods when it was not considered to be very salubrious and others when social problems were imported by government policies of housing poor people in ghettos there.
We visited Sue and family, who were watching an alarmingly hypnotic program which followed the fortunes of the ‘Britain’s strongest Man’ competition. They had all eaten so we ate our chips and pizza as we watched. The girls were put to bed, with Stefan failing so dismally as chief settler that, when we left about an hour later, they were still in fine form enough for me to go up and have a lengthy ‘goodbye’ chat. They really were the sweetest little girls, only a year apart, different as could be and both so open and friendly.We were to leave the next day, so we spent some time looking at Beryl’s photos and talking family again, always an interesting topic and one where we really appreciate all the hard work Keith’s brother, Allan, has put into contacting everyone and bringing all the research together.
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