Few record shops trade from a Grade I listed building, and fewer still from one raised in 1636 as a free school for the children of a medieval town. Grammar School Records fills the ground floor of the Old Grammar School on Rye High Street, where the brick frontage and its arched doorways give way to racks of classical LPs, film soundtracks, jazz, rock and boxes of 7in singles.
Background / History
Geoff Boudreau opened the shop in 1991, having come to Rye to look at houses and found the premises standing empty with the lease for sale. The idea had been with him for years, following a spell working in a record store in Washington DC, and when the banks turned down his loan he raised private backing instead. He was already trading as Backtrack, a soundtrack specialist he founded in Brighton in 1980 and built on monthly mail-order catalogues, and the two businesses have shared the High Street address ever since. The building itself was put up by Thomas Peacocke, a local benefactor whose endowment educated Rye boys here until the early twentieth century.
What You’ll Find
Around 20,000 LPs are on the floor at any one time: roughly 7,000 classical titles, 8,000 soundtracks and musicals, 5,000 rock and pop records reaching back to the 1950s, and more than a thousand jazz albums. Folk, blues, reggae, world music, easy listening, comedy and spoken word all hold their own sections. Alongside them sit some 20,000 7in singles gathered over three decades, about 8,000 CDs weighted heavily towards film scores, hundreds of 78s, cassettes, videos, DVDs and magazines. The 8-track cartridges are the real curiosity, about a thousand of them and many still sealed, the largest selection anywhere in the country. Every LP is professionally cleaned before it goes out, everything sold carries a full guarantee, and staged discounts apply to larger orders.
Experience / Atmosphere
This is a shop for people who like to take their time. Stock is sorted with real care rather than piled for effect, so a morning spent working through the classical racks or the soundtrack section tends to turn up things you did not know existed. Geoff buys selectively and knows the stock intimately, which makes conversation across the counter genuinely useful, whether you are chasing a particular pressing or leaving a wants list for him to keep an eye on. Dealers are welcome too, and the mail-order side brings in requests from collectors well beyond Sussex. Geoff has put plenty back into the town as well, running contemporary music events for the Rye Arts Festival for nineteen years and helping to start the Rye Film Club.
Why Visit
- Owner-run since 1991 from the ground floor of Rye’s 1636 Old Grammar School
- The most extensive soundtrack stock in the United Kingdom, on both LP and CD
- Around 7,000 classical LPs, with jazz, rock, pop, folk, blues and reggae in depth
- Roughly 20,000 7in singles, plus 78s, cassettes and about a thousand 8-track cartridges, many sealed
- Records professionally cleaned, fully guaranteed, and discounts on larger orders
- Open seven days a week in one of the prettiest towns in the south east
Summary
Thirty years of careful buying has given Grammar School Records a stock that rewards a proper visit rather than a quick look, particularly if your interests run to classical music, film scores or the forgotten corners of the singles boxes. Set that against a walk through Rye’s cobbled streets and a browse in a building older than most of the music inside it, and the trip pays for itself twice over.
