The new publication is attractively presented. Text and illustrations are enlarged, making them easier to engage with. It has also been substantially re-organised into a better format, with fewer sections. These explore in fascinating detail different aspects of the town’s history and its social, domestic and working life during the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century.
The photographs are drawn from a variety of sources, each of which is meticulously acknowledged, principally from Rye and Hastings museums, but many in private ownership. Whilst the identification of individual buildings is intriguing, the overall value of the book lies in its faithful record of a market town and its thriving local economy and a way of life now irretrievably lost to the past.
The book is available from Adams and the Rye Bookshop, price £12.99.
photo: Kenneth Bird