A Rye Smile

As we wiggled towards Rye's historic centre, I spotted a warehouse bearing the sign 'Glass Etc Antiques & High Class Junk'. I swerved into the car park (one London pound for 24 hours of parking) and duly trotted into the shop. The gothically named Ethne Tragic was behind the till and greeted us with discreet but twinkling interest. Certainly she knows all the machinations of Rye, but beyond telling us who owned what business and how long they'd been there, she did not elaborate. It struck me, though, that there is a new Rye and old Rye. Newcomers are diverting but suspect. Visitors do not count as newcomers. How I love an alien social hierarchy.

Andy himself appeared and, after a tour of his chaotic but compelling outhouses which burst with glass, he called ahead to Rye's Fish Café to tell the owner that we wanted a table for lunch. They were on first-name terms, but isn't everyone in Rye? This was perhaps the best fish and chips I have ever had - hot and light and sinful, but well-earned from an early walk on the nearby Camber Sands, the beach where Kate Moss appeared in her famous first shoot with Corinne Day. Bucket and spaders stripped off in the autumn sunshine and children swam with dogs in the flat grey waters. We wandered along finding shells among the pebbles and we stopped for a hot chocolate at the retro Kit Kat Café, which reminded me of my days beside the seaside as a small bike-riding girl in the early Eighties. Now this hot chocolate is the talk of Rye and came widely and highly recommended. To tell the truth, it is bog-standard powdered stuff dissolved in white-hot milk, which is pretty heavenly after a couple of hours of tramping over sand and stone in a frisky South Coast breeze.

We stayed at The George in Rye, a hotel lodged in a converted 16thcentury coaching inn locked within the medieval town. Our room was small but pretty, with sweet hand-painted wallpaper, chic mirrored furniture, a good roll-top bath and views that looked out on to the cobbled streets and antiques shops below. The hotel, being generally compact, has a remarkable Georgian ballroom and a very sunny enclosed courtyard for breakfast, weather permitting.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was simple and tasty, and full of locals, which has to be a good sign. And they weren't Granny's special birthday/first-date locals either, heaven be praised. The tables were rather close together which, I suppose, is good for eavesdropping. I had a whole local crab and dove in with with brio, reemerging splattered but proud.

Before dinner, we strolled through the absurdly charming side streets towards Lamb House, an 18th-century urban mansion completed by James Lamb in 1723. Three years later, when George I was returning from Hanover to open Parliament, his ship was driven on to Camber Sands by a storm and the Lambs took him in for three rather awkward days. The situation was made more uncomfortable by the fact that the King spoke very little English (the Lambs spoke no German) and the fact that the heavily pregnant Mrs Lamb had to give up her bedroom to His Majesty and birthed her first son in a spare room. The baby was named George, the King was made godfather, and all was gracious. If I were her, I would have been furious.

Lamb House is most famous for being the house in which Henry James spent the last 18 years of his life. He wrote The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl here and the panelled walls of what was his study bear some framed correspondence.

Nowadays Lamb House is descended upon by EF Benson fanatics. Indeed there is even a Benson walking tour of Rye which takes in all the Tilling landmarks that gave the author inspiration. He had visited Henry James at Lamb House and leased the place from the Twenties until his death in 1940, serving as magistrate and mayor. This equipped him to observe all the petty municipalities that ruled the town and to record the gossip that held Rye in its thrall.

Lamb House is now occupied by a stylist, Francesca Rowan, and her actor husband Dominic (he recently appeared in Under the Blue Sky at the Duke of York's Theatre). They are enthusiastic custodians and are amused by the local interest in them; a young and blatantly beautiful London media couple. People have been talking and spying. But then, this is Rye. Long live the curtain twitchers and the social competitors. It is forever England.

NEED TO KNOW THE GEORGE IN RYE

OUT AND ABOUT IN RYE