Skip to main content

Jeake's House

Mermaid Street, Rye old town · Guest House

A seventeenth-century former wool store and school on Mermaid Street, run as a characterful guesthouse with beamed rooms and a galleried library.

About Jeake's House

Jeake's House began life in 1689 as a wool store before serving as a Baptist school and later becoming the home of the American poet Conrad Aiken, and it has operated as a guesthouse for several decades from its position on Mermaid Street. The building's history is visible throughout, from exposed beams to sloping floors and leaded windows.

Rooms are individually furnished in a traditional style, several with four-poster or brass beds, and many looking out over the rooftops of the old town or the marsh beyond. A galleried book-lined room doubles as a bar in the evenings and a breakfast room in the morning, giving the house a distinctly literary, lived-in feel.

Breakfast is served in this same room and draws on local ingredients, and the house's position halfway up Mermaid Street puts the church, museum and High Street shops all within a short, if cobbled, walk.

At a glance

Property type
Guest House
Location
Mermaid Street, Rye old town
Guest score
9.0 / 10 (520 reviews)
Prices from
£135 per night
Destination
Rye