A wall clock bearing the name JN Masters Ltd Rye now hangs above the sales counter in Adams Stationers in the High Street. It has an interesting provenance, having been sold from that very shop some 100 years ago. Until recently it had been owned by an elderly lady in Brookland, but knowing that Clifford Foster of Adams loves old clocks, she offered to sell it to him. It joins company with another JN Masters timepiece which faces Conduit Hill amongst all the advertisements.
John Neave Masters (1846-1928) was very much a Rye character in his day. Born in Tenterden, he came to Rye as a young man of 23 to take over a watchmaker’s business at Hope House, (see photo above) scarcely recognisable now as Adams stationers shop in the High Street. Masters became famous as the maker of the medal-winning Veracity fob watch.
Later, he started a mail-order business, selling a wide range of goods: men’s boots, ladies’ costumes (on easy terms), and made-to-measure suits were advertised in national magazines. In the mid 1920s, he had no less than 30 female employees working for him on the premises.
Incidentally, another Rye merchant named Gasson, with shop premises in Cinque Ports Street is credited with being one of the first mail-order suppliers in the UK, retailing garden seeds and equipment nationwide.
Masters was elected Mayor of Rye in 1893 and in 1921 he published his “Amusing Reminiscences of Victorian times and of today” which has now become a collectors’ volume.
Photo: Kenneth Bird