THE ‘ANNE’ GUN PROJECT

The plan is to restore the barrel and mount it on a historically accurate carriage, made from elm and hand wrought iron. Similar to the illustration above. We want to do this by next summer, so that we can celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Museum.

All this will cost several thousand pounds to achieve, the Parish Council and Corporation have both pledged money and so has FOAM, but it’s not quite enough, so we will inevitably need to do some fundraising.

Our first event is a talk about the Anne, in the Church on Saturday 7th December at 7pm. Speaking will be Richard Endsor, an engineer and artist, who has written a book on the Anne. And JD Davies, a prolific author who has written several books about the 17^th century navy, and also a best-selling series of historical naval fiction, set in the restoration period, ‘The Journals of Matthew Quinton’.

This will be a great opportunity to find out some more about the Anne’s fascinating story and her importance in naval history and to the local area.  Richard is even bringing some artifacts from the Anne for us to examine.

Tickets are £10 and all money will go towards the project. They can be purchased online at ticketsource.co.uk

The story of the Anne is a fascinating one.  In 1690, after being badly damaged during the Battle of Beachy Head, she was deliberately run aground and burnt by her Captain, John Tyrrell, to prevent the French taking her as a prize. Today her lower timbers remain preserved in the mud at Pett Level, where they can be occasionally glimpsed during very low tides. What is believed to be the only remaining gun from the Anne, now lies in Winchelsea, although how it got there is a bit of a mystery.

It wasn’t long after her wrecking that work began to retrieve her guns. Teams of horses were used to drag the guns up the beach, and then transport them on wagons to Winchelsea, where they were examined and tested, and those that were in good condition deployed to other ships.

It seems that one gun remained in the area.  Charles Trollope, an expert on these matters, has identified the gun as a Saker.  The Anne carried 14 of these guns, which were all cast in Sweden. There is evidence that it has been buried upright.  Charles speculates that, having failed testing, the gun may have been used as a pivot to support another gun, on a battery that was constructed on Winchelsea Beach.

If you would like to discover more, come along to our talk, and if you can’t make it, please consider supporting the project through IPC’s ‘GoFundMe’ page at https://gofund.me/56708ec2