Mary Stanford RNLI Lifeboat station

For our 19th wedding anniversary we had a day out on the coast at Rye Harbour and its nature reserve. A new Discovery Centre has recently opened and what a marvellous place it is. Informative exhibitions about the area, its history and its ecology. And an excellent cafe too.

From there we walked, into a strong and blustery wind, out over a shingle landscape peppered with old flooded pits with plenty of birds: including terns, avocets, cormorants, egrets and curlew.

We passed by this abandoned lifeboat station which used to the home of the Mary Stanford lifeboat. On 15 November 1928 the Mary Stanford capsized, drowning the entire 17-man crew, making this the largest ever loss of life of RNLI crew.

After the disaster the lifeboat station was abandoned. Of the 17 crew, 4 came from the Pope family, 3 from the Cutting family and 2 from the Dewneys.

Owing to poor navigation the walk took longer than we expected. We were a little later than expected getting to the Pilot for dinner. It was busy with few people wearing masks, fortunately we found a quiet corner to enjoy our fish pie. It’s the first time we’ve been there and not had fish and chips!

For those who tried to guess which of the children in yesterday’s extra was me, nobody got the right answer. I’m the sickly, quite portly chap on left. I was 4 and had just been sick and was sick again shortly afterwards. I remember it well!