Rye’s Thursday market is dying on its feet with cars moving in as rapidly as stallholders leave spaces – and there seems no sign that anyone is doing, or wants to do, anything about it.
Indeed, if it continues to shrink at the current rate, it will be gone for good in a few weeks.
The loss of the big white marquee which was full of cut price food was clearly a major blow, and January’s weather did not help…. and maybe half term is usually a bad week. And perhaps the last two weeks of storms have been off-putting, but…..
But this week (Thursday, February 20) many of the stalls we usually see (and have seen already this year) were missing. The large meat van was there selling multiple packs of most things you might want, and so was the greengrocer.
However, on a very quick walk through, the flowers and plants stall had shrunk to half its size, I do not recall any clothing stalls, and what there was seem to be crowded in by cars.
The book stall was not there, though I think the baker was – and there were many fewer hardware and domestic stalls selling all sorts of kitchen, garden and garage needs.
But I saw no evidence of those who run the market (who I presume run the car park) being at all worried and indeed at all interested. Perhaps car parking pays better.
The market met and meets a need – and we should never forget the levels of poverty in Rye and the surrounding area.
All around our country, coastal towns are sources of major poverty. But so are many rural areas, and we have both here. Coastal and rural poverty.
I shop in the market. It’s cheap. The quality is not always brilliant, but it is cheap. And I buy vegetables and fruit, books, flowers, plants, tinned food, sheets, household bits and pieces, a hammer, curtain cords. Quite a long list in fact.
But it looks as though it is vanishing overnight – and no-one cares. Or do they?