The Mermaid Inn: Nine Centuries on Mermaid Street

The Mermaid Inn has occupied its position on Mermaid Street in Rye for the better part of a millennium. Its cellars are Norman. Its walls are medieval. Its ghosts are Tudor and Georgian. Few buildings in England can claim such a sustained record of human occupation, and fewer still can demonstrate so clearly how the layers of that occupation have accumulated, one on top of the next, each leaving something behind.

Origins

The earliest surviving elements of The Mermaid Inn date from 1156, when the cellars were constructed beneath the original building. Nikolaus Pevsner and English Heritage later identified these cellars as 13th-century, but the traditional dating to 1156 is well established in the historical record. The original inn above was built from wattle and daub, lath and plaster. It brewed its own ale and charged a penny a night for a bed. Rye was a prosperous port, one of the Cinque Ports that provided ships for the royal fleet, and the inn served the sailors and merchants who passed through the harbour. Mermaid Street was the town’s main road, placing the inn at the commercial heart of the settlement.

In the 1420s, the building was completely rebuilt. The Norman cellars were retained, but the structure above was replaced with a timber-framed construction that forms the core of the building visible today. Some of the timber was salvaged from ships that had been broken up. The south-facing elevation, the oldest section above ground, has a five-window range to the upper storey with a jettied overhang supported on wooden columns with brackets and cross-beams. The north-facing range, beyond the courtyard, is also timber-framed but with brick facing and infilling.

Through the Centuries

The 16th century brought significant additions and a series of distinguished visitors. Catholic priests fleeing the Continental Reformation in the 1530s took shelter at the inn, leaving behind the inscription J.H.S., or Jesus Hominum Salvator, carved into the oak-panelled room now known as Syn’s Lounge. Between 1550 and 1570, the inn became the venue for the Town Corporation’s official functions: the Sessions Dinner, the Gentlemen’s Freeman’s Dinner, Mayoring Day and the Herring Feast. Queen Elizabeth I herself stayed at the inn during this period.

The building’s chimneys are made of Caen stone with carved decorations. Several of the stone fireplaces bear carved monograms, names and dates, including “1643”, “1646” and “Loffelholtz”. The Giant’s Fireplace Bar features an inglenook fireplace supported by a beam that spans the entire width of the room. Some of the chairs were carved from ships’ timbers, continuing the connection between the inn and the sea that created it.

By 1770, the building had ceased to function as an inn. It passed through private ownership and by 1847 was the residence of Charles Poile, with the yard at the back known as the Mermaid Yard.

Notable Guests and Events

The inn’s revival as a social venue began in 1913 when May Aldington acquired the property and opened it as a club. May was the mother of the novelist Richard Aldington, and her connections drew a remarkable circle of literary and artistic figures to Rye. Dame Ellen Terry, the greatest actress of the Victorian stage, visited regularly. Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s “Bosie,” was a frequent guest. The brothers A.C. and E.F. Benson both spent time at the inn. E.F. Benson would later live at nearby Lamb House and use Rye as the model for his fictional town of Tilling in the Mapp and Lucia novels. The poet Rupert Brooke also visited during this period, shortly before the First World War took his life.

During the Second World War, Canadian officers were garrisoned at the inn in 1945. One of them, a Mr L. Wilson, returned after the war to purchase the building. In 1982, the inn hosted a luncheon for the Queen Mother during her visit to Rye when she was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. That same year, the exterior of the inn and the cobbled Mermaid Street leading to it were used as filming locations for the comedy film Yellowbeard, which proved to be Marty Feldman’s final project before his death in Mexico during production.

Judith Blincow purchased the inn in 1993 and has owned it since. The restaurant holds an AA Rosette and serves British and French cuisine in a dining room decorated with medieval-style artwork by graduates of the Slade School of Fine Art.

The Dark History

The defining dark chapter of The Mermaid Inn’s history is the Hawkhurst Gang’s occupation during the 1730s and 1740s. The gang was a large-scale criminal enterprise controlling smuggling operations from Kent to Dorset. Their main base was the Oak and Ivy Inn in Hawkhurst, but they used The Mermaid as their Rye stronghold. The scale of their operation was extraordinary. They landed contraband on the beaches of the south coast, moved it inland through networks of tunnels and safe houses, and sold it throughout the region.

At The Mermaid, they built a tunnel from the cellars to the Old Bell Inn on The Mint, the street running parallel to Mermaid Street. A revolving cupboard at the Old Bell end concealed the tunnel’s exit. A contemporary resident of Rye described what it was like to live alongside the gang: he recalled seeing them, after successfully running a cargo of goods on the seashore, seated at the windows of the house carousing and smoking their pipes with their loaded pistols lying on the table before them, no magistrate daring to interfere with them.

The gang’s violence was extreme. They murdered a customs officer named William Galley and an informant named Daniel Chater in 1748, crimes that finally provoked the government into decisive action. Several gang members were captured, tried and executed. Their bodies were displayed in gibbets across the south-east. The Mermaid Inn’s association with the gang is not a romantic footnote. It is the record of a building that served as the headquarters of a violent criminal organisation for two decades.

Architectural Heritage

The Mermaid Inn was listed at Grade II* by English Heritage on 12 October 1951, defining it as a “particularly important” building of “more than special interest.” As of 2001, it was one of 75 Grade II* listed buildings in the Rother district.

The building contains 31 rooms, each of different design, spread across several floors. Eight bedrooms have four-poster beds. The ceilings have thick, dark teak wood beams. The windows are leaded, with diamond-paned windows at the rear. The floors creak. The secret passages that once served the Hawkhurst Gang have been converted into fireplaces, but the cellars and elements of the tunnel system remain part of the building’s fabric.

The Haunted Legacy

The Mermaid Inn’s paranormal reputation is not an invention of the modern hospitality industry. It is a consequence of the building’s extreme age and the intensity of the events that have occurred within its walls. At least seven of the inn’s 31 rooms carry documented reports of supernatural activity. The duelling swordsmen of Room 16 have been described by researchers as one of the most well-organised ghostly scenarios anywhere in England. The Lady in White has been seen in both Room 5 and Room 1. Room 17’s self-rocking chair has left chambermaids refusing to work alone. A gentleman in period clothing has been seen sitting on the bed in Room 19. A figure has been witnessed walking through walls in Room 10. Film equipment has captured unexplained light anomalies in Room 15. The inn was investigated by the television programme Most Haunted.

The building’s extreme age, its architectural complexity, and the layers of history it has accumulated combine to create an environment where the past does not remain entirely in the past. The Norman cellars still stand beneath the medieval walls. The Tudor panelling still bears the inscriptions of refugee priests. The Hawkhurst Gang’s tunnels still run beneath the cobbled streets. The Mermaid Inn is not a museum. It is a working hotel where guests sleep in rooms where men fought with rapiers, where smugglers planned their operations, and where figures still walk through walls that were once doorways.

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The Mermaid Inn stands as a living monument to Rye’s rich and sometimes violent history.