Mermaid Street, Rye, East Sussex. A street steeped in history.

Poem.

 

A steep, cobbled street.

Elegant half-timbered, Tudor houses

with overhanging upper storeys jostle

up and down this remarkable thoroughfare.

Medieval inns, hotels and boarding houses

crowd together from end to end.

A little imagination can remove the modern car

and fill this sharp gradient with locals,

merchants, visitors, smugglers, pilgrims and travellers.

For a thousand years wood-fired chimneys have

belched their smoke above and around the

oak timbers and pale wattle and daub panelled walls,

leaving their sooty signature.

With the sky grey and the atmosphere obscured,

this ancient road seems little changed from the 15th. century.

Its unchanging ambience seems to lock us in a time warp,

a reliable time-machine that

earns world-wide affection.

Done