James (Jim) Hollands, 1939-2025
When I first met Jimmy Hollands in 1977, he was living in a remote part of Mid Wales where he and his wife Roma had bought a farm, complete with stone farmhouse, numerous outbuildings, and a few acres of rocky mountainside. It was a world away from Rye and Jim had quickly learned that the local council had long been promising to provide a leisure facility, there being no entertainment for miles around. Ever the entrepreneur, in very little time Jim turned the outbuildings into a games room, a table tennis hall and a mini cinema. The rocky hillside became a pitch and putt course, and B&B holidays offered in the house itself.
Here he hosted competitions, film nights, mini golf tournaments and his place was soon popular for miles. Not so popular with the council though, as they did eventually build the leisure facility and nobody used it!
I returned to Wales and Jimmy’s farm several times over three years and on one occasion, when Jim was asked to be official photographer for a royal visit, he took me as camera assistant and I was able to meet and share a few words with the young Prince of Wales, the man who is now our King.
During my visit on this occasion, Jim hosted the Mid Wales Scrabble Tournament which I won – my prize a grey and white Dutch rabbit. I called him Scrabble.
Fast forward a few decades and Jim returned to Rye. He resurrected Rye’s Own magazine which he had originally produced in the earlier seventies. I still have copies of the 1974 issue featuring Rye’s Teen of the Month, Philip Law, a special friend of both myself and of Rye, then and now.
A couple of years later, Jim called me. He and others including his friend Councillor Granville Bantick had founded The Campaign for Democracy in Rye (CDR), fed up with Rother Council’s dominance and Rye Council’s apparent impotence when it came to local governance. They were seeking candidates for the coming local elections, and he told me my name had come up repeatedly as a prospective possible. I agreed, albeit with some trepidation, but I was duly elected under the CDR banner. That is how I became a Rye Town Councillor. Through Jimmy Hollands.
CDR did not last, but some of its aims and ambitions became a lynch pin for Rye Council to pursue. Negotiations and co-operation with RDC increased and the old animosities began to be buried. Jim was happy about that and wrote some very complimentary editorial, particularly during my time as mayor of Rye. He was also very good-natured about me falling off his racing bike when we were opening the long-awaited cycle path along the Rye Harbour Road.
His energy, enthusiasm, and youthful outlook were an inspiration, but none more so than his unshakable passion for Rye. Jim recognised that times change and that "the old days" couldn’t be regained, but that didn’t ever stop him from campaigning against any "progress" he saw as being harmful to our town.
Jim was my friend; my sometime mentor and I will miss him. I am proud to have been able to write this piece in his memory.
