Back

[Mermaid Inn, Rye.] 40. [The Mermaid Inn is a rambling, half-timbered building, and one of the best examples of old English domestic architecture in existence. It has broad open fireplaces, with great beams over its rafted ceilings, Dutch tiling and fine panelled rooms. Although the Inn has been modernized and is now a private hotel, the restoration work has been sympathetically done, and it still retains the atmosphere of a seafarers' inn of the old times. The Inn has many literary and historical associations, and was almost certainly known to John Fletcher, the well known Elizabethan dramatist, was was born in Rye. One of the interesting stories of the Inn is that concerning the ghost which is said to appear at midnight. Many writers and artists have lived in the town, including William Thackeray, Millais, Ruskin and Henry James.]