Trevor Mottram

Trevor Mottram — who had run an ironmonger's in Rye before this — opened his kitchen shop on the Pantiles on 7 December 1975, and it grew along the colonnade the way good shops used to: into the antiques premises next door in 1993, into two more numbers in 2002, until the kitchenware occupied a small parade. Sarah and Alan Wood bought the business from the Mottrams in April 2000 and have run it independently since — the succession stated plainly, because the name over the door outlived the founder's tenure — and 2025 marked fifty years of the shop itself. It remains the reference kitchen shop of the south east: the pan you actually need, sold by someone who has used one.