Lamb House, Rye, East Sussex

I was about to start doing my ironing the other day so I had to decide which DVD to watch whilst doing it as I absolutely must have something to distract me from the task, yes the ironing does suffer and I often end up ironing in even more creases but it keeps me semi-sane! Anyway, I plumped for the Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson which I’ve watched several times before but more than anything I just wanted to re-visit the lovely wee town of Rye in the only way that I can at the moment. Lots of Rye locations were used in the filming of the series and they’re all very recognisable. It occurred to me that I had never shown any of the photos of the garden before, not that they’re all that exciting, I hope it was better when the house was owned by E.F. Benson and before him by the American author Henry James, or the several other authors who seem to have lived there in the past. I can see why people love the place despite it being a bit of a tourist Mecca, it was a well known haunt of smugglers in the past, as well as French invaders and the whole place is very atmospheric – and it has a secondhand bookshop!

Garden, Lamb House, Rye

Lamb House, Rye, Garden

Rye, Garden of Lamb House

Jack’s posts about Lamb House and Rye are here. You can read more about Rye here.

8 thoughts on “Lamb House, Rye, East Sussex

  1. I missed the bookstore which makes me wonder if we only saw the outside of Lamb House. I will have to check with my traveling companions. I did very much like Rye which my mother and I and my friend Nicky, a librarian in London, visited about 2 1/2 years ago as a day trip. We started with tea in the authentically smoky Mermaid Inn, then mostly wandered idly about the town. There were some used books at the church so don’t worry that I left empty-handed!

    • Constance,
      Possibly it wasn’t open to the public when you were there. The bookshop wasn’t actually inside Lamb House, although as the house is now owned by the National Trust there might be some old books for sale there, sometimes local members donate books they no longer want to keep. The secondhand bookshop was in a wee side street, it had been there for years but the owner was getting on when we were there and she was thnking about retiring so it might not be there now. I hope someone has taken it over if she has retired. Next time we go we’ll do so outside the tourist season, then maybe we’ll be able to get into the Mermaid Inn! We might even book a room there. I did quite well for books at a few charity shops while in Rye!

  2. I don’t think Lamb House was open to the public when we visited Rye back in the 1980s. I thought the village was lovely and could picture Mapp and Lucia and all their friends wandering the winding streets.

    • Joan,
      Rye has a lovely atmosphere and the locations used in the filming of the DVDs are very easily recognised, except nowadays there are usually cars parked outside the houses. I’m sure that Lamb House is a fairly recent addition to the National Trust so it was probably a private home when you were there.

  3. I bet there is something on YouTube about Rye that would be fun to watch and recreate the lovely day I spent there. I will have to look.

    One thing I just saw today that interested me is that Rumer Godden actually lived in Lamb House! Then she spent the last 20 years of her life in Scotland. I hope she had good heating – you always read about how people who lived much of their lives in India are perpetually cold when they settle in the UK!

    https://www.rumergodden.com/biography/

    • Constance,

      It is mentioned in an info board in Lamb House that Rumer Godden had lived there at one point. I think a lot of authors are associated with the house, especially as visitors. Yes she did move to Scotland to be close to her daughter. I have a book by her called The Dragon of Og, set in Scotland and she really soaked up Scottish culture in those twenty years and used a lot of Scots words. I think that must mean she liked living here, but I bet she felt frozen most of the time! https://piningforthewest.co.uk/2017/08/25/the-dragon-of-og-by-rumer-godden/

  4. The heading picture is visibly not of Rye, let alone Lamb House.

    Lamb House has been with the National Trust since 1950, let out with a condition it be opened to the public part time. It is only in recent years that it has the fuller opening of a managed house.

    • N Davenport,

      The header of a blog is nothing to do with an individual post. It is rarely changed and this year mine has been the photo that I took from the top of Dumbarton Castle/Rock, looking over to the town of Dumbarton and Ben Lomond beyond. If you had scrolled down you would have seen that the blogpost was about my visit to Lamb House in 2019 showing the photos that I took there.
      Regards,
      Katrina

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