Qualla: The Mermaid Inn, Rye https://qualla.com/the-mermaid-inn-rye en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:10 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/9/the-mermaid-inn-rye-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: The Mermaid Inn, Rye https://qualla.com/the-mermaid-inn-rye The Mermaid Inn, Rye: Introduction https://qualla.com/the-mermaid-inn-rye/ Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. The cellars are older than the building above them. The Mermaid Inn's vaulted underground rooms date to 1156, which is unusual enough on a British high street; the timber-framed building they support dates to 1420, which is comfortably medieval; the Tudor additions came in the 16th century, when the inn was already three hundred years old. Walk in from Mermaid Street today and the floors slope, the doorways crouch, and the ceiling beams - thick, dark, made from ships' timbers - look like they remember things. The current owners, Judith Blincow and Robert Pinwill, have run the place since 1993. They are stewards more than proprietors of a building that has outlasted nine centuries of England.

Read more: The Mermaid Inn, Rye on Qualla

Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/9/the-mermaid-inn-rye-wp/u109-the-mermaid-inn-rye-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full The Mermaid Inn, Rye: Cellars and a Cobblestone Street https://qualla.com/the-mermaid-inn-rye/ Photo credit DimiTalen, CC0. The cellars of the Mermaid have been variously dated. Nikolaus Pevsner, the great architectural surveyor, and English Heritage both placed them in the 13th century, but the inn's own records and earlier scholarship pin them to 1156, the founding year of the original alehouse. The...

Read more: The Mermaid Inn, Rye on Qualla

Image: DimiTalen | CC0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/9/the-mermaid-inn-rye-wp/u109-the-mermaid-inn-rye-cellars-and-a-cobblestone-street.mp3 0:06 2 full The Mermaid Inn, Rye: Priests, Mayors, and a Hymn in Latin https://qualla.com/the-mermaid-inn-rye/ Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. Long before the smugglers, the Mermaid was a refuge of a different sort. In 1530, Catholic priests fleeing the Reformation in continental Europe sheltered here, and one of them left a quiet record of his stay - the Latin abbreviation IHS, for Jesus Hominum Salvator, carved into t...

Read more: The Mermaid Inn, Rye on Qualla

Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/9/the-mermaid-inn-rye-wp/u109-the-mermaid-inn-rye-priests-mayors-and-a-hymn-in-latin.mp3 0:06 3 full The Mermaid Inn, Rye: The Hawkhurst Gang https://qualla.com/the-mermaid-inn-rye/ Photo credit Simon Carey, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the 1730s and 1740s Rye was a major smuggling port, and the Hawkhurst Gang - the most feared smuggling outfit in 18th-century England - made the Mermaid one of its strongholds. Free trade, as the smugglers called their work, moved tea, brandy, lace, and tobacco in from France ...

Read more: The Mermaid Inn, Rye on Qualla

Image: Simon Carey | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/9/the-mermaid-inn-rye-wp/u109-the-mermaid-inn-rye-the-hawkhurst-gang.mp3 0:06 4 full The Mermaid Inn, Rye: Artists, Actors, and Bosie https://qualla.com/the-mermaid-inn-rye/ Photo credit Phlizz, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1913 the inn had taken on yet another character. May Aldington, mother of the novelist Richard Aldington, bought it and ran it as a club, and through the 1910s and 1920s it became the place for a generation of English artists to drink and stay. Dame Ellen Terry, the great Shak...

Read more: The Mermaid Inn, Rye on Qualla

Image: Phlizz | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/9/the-mermaid-inn-rye-wp/u109-the-mermaid-inn-rye-artists-actors-and-bosie.mp3 0:06 5 full The Mermaid Inn, Rye: What You See Today https://qualla.com/the-mermaid-inn-rye/ Photo credit Dr Neil Clifton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Mermaid is Grade II* listed - the second-highest English heritage protection, applied to fewer than six per cent of listed buildings - and it has the documentation to prove it: in 2001 it was one of 75 Grade II* listed buildings among 2,106 listed buildings of all grades in t...

Read more: The Mermaid Inn, Rye on Qualla

Image: Dr Neil Clifton | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/0/9/the-mermaid-inn-rye-wp/u109-the-mermaid-inn-rye-what-you-see-today.mp3 0:06 6 full