England
Rye
Cobbled smugglers’ streets, a haunted medieval inn, and marsh fog off the Channel.
Rye is a small medieval hill town on the edge of the Romney Marsh, a knot of cobbled streets and leaning timber houses that was once a Cinque Port and a notorious smugglers’ haunt, its inns riddled with hidden passages and its cellars stacked with contraband. The sea has since pulled back, leaving it stranded and perfectly preserved a couple of miles inland.
It is very pretty and it knows it, but under the postcard is real darkness: a tower that served as the town gaol, a haunted inn where a phantom still walks the corridors, ghost walks that mean it, and marsh fog that swallows the whole place whole. Come off-season, and stay the night.
Go when Autumn and winter, when the sea fog rolls off Romney Marsh and the cobbles empty of day trippers. Rye is tiny, so an off-season weekday is the whole town to yourself.
Haunt
What to See
Ossuaries, oddity museums, cemeteries, and the odd corners most guides skip.
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Mermaid Street
The most photographed street in Rye and worth every shutter: a steep cobbled run of 15th and 16th-century houses leaning into each other, one named "The House with Two Front Doors" and another, drily, "The House Opposite". Go early or late, when the day trippers thin and it belongs to the fog again.
Best shot The cobbled street climbing between the leaning timber houses, empty at dawn or dusk.
- Touristy
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Ypres Tower & Rye Castle Museum
A squat 13th-century stone tower on the cliff edge that has been, over the centuries, a fort, a house, and for a long time the town gaol, with a grim women’s tower stuck on the side. Now a small museum of Rye’s smuggling and hanging past. Climb up for the view over the marsh.
Best shot The stone tower on the cliff edge with the marsh and Channel beyond.
- Adults only
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St Mary’s Church, Rye
The medieval church crowning the town, with one of the oldest working church turret clocks in the country and a pair of gilded cherubs, the Quarter Boys, who strike the quarter hours. Climb the tower for the best view in Rye. Free, small charge for the tower.
Best shot The rooftops and marsh from the church tower, or the golden Quarter Boys on the clock face.
- Quiet
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The Landgate
The last surviving medieval gate into the walled town, a fortified stone arch of 1329 that traffic still squeezes through. Stand under it at night, floodlit and empty, and the centuries close right in.
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Camber Castle
A ruined Henry VIII artillery fort stranded out in the flat marsh between Rye and the sea, reached by a long, lonely walk across the levels. Roofless, circular and silent, with only sheep and birds for company. The open days are limited, but the walk and the silhouette are free any time.
Best shot The low round fort alone on the marsh under a big sky, best in flat evening light.
- Quiet
- Solo-friendly
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Winchelsea
Rye’s ghostly twin, a planned medieval town the sea and the French between them all but killed, leaving a handful of streets, a vast broken church far too big for the village around it, and a maze of medieval wine cellars under the houses. Eerie, empty and barely visited.
Best shot The broken arches of the oversized church against the sky.
- Quiet
- Solo-friendly
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Lamb House
A handsome Georgian house behind a high wall, home first to the novelist Henry James and later to E.F. Benson, who mined the town for his waspish Mapp and Lucia. National Trust, quiet, a walled garden, and the literary ghost of the place thick in the panelled rooms.
- Quiet
Rest
Where to Stay
B&Bs, haunted old hotels, Victorian piles. No hostels, ever.
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The Mermaid Inn
$$$A 15th-century inn on the cobbles with cellars going back to 1156, once the headquarters of the murderous Hawkhurst smuggling gang, riddled with secret passages and priest holes and a full cast of ghosts, including a lady said to walk clean through the wall of one room. Beams, four-posters, a huge fireplace. The most atmospheric bed on the south coast.
- Adults only
- Quiet
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Jeake's House
$$A rambling 17th-century house on Mermaid Street, once home to the poet Conrad Aiken, now a wonderfully old-fashioned B&B of creaking floors, book-lined walls and breakfast in a former chapel. Characterful and calm.
- Quiet
- Adults only
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The George in Rye
$$$A Tudor coaching inn on the High Street done up as a smart boutique hotel, old bones and modern comfort, with a good bar to fall into after a day on the cobbles.
- Adults only
- Quiet
Feast
Where to Eat & Drink
Candlelit cellars, dark bars, rooms with history in the walls.
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The Ship Inn
$$A characterful old pub at the bottom of the town in a building that started life as a store for contraband seized from smugglers, all mismatched furniture, low light and a slightly wonky charm. Good food, better atmosphere.
- Adults only
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Ye Olde Bell Inn
$$A 15th-century pub with a smugglers’ tunnel said to run from its fireplace straight to the Mermaid Inn up the hill, for a quick disappearance when the excisemen called. Cosy, old and proud of its criminal past.
- Solo-friendly
- Adults only
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The Standard Inn
$$A beautifully restored 15th-century inn of bare beams, flagstones and open fires, doing proper food in properly old rooms. One of the loveliest interiors in the town.
- Adults only
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Simon the Pieman
$Rye’s oldest tearoom, in a tiny 15th-century building by the church, all low beams and cake stands and a fire. Twee, yes, but a genuinely ancient room and a good warm stop between ghosts.
- Solo-friendly
Loot
Where to Shop
Vintage, avant-garde black, and oddities to take home. No fast fashion.
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Strand Quay Antiques
The old warehouses down by the river at Strand Quay hold a run of antiques centres: floors of dealers in furniture, curios, taxidermy and dead people’s silver. The best rummage in a town that is basically one big antique shop.
- Solo-friendly
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