Smugglers caches and tricks along the 19thC Cornish coast.

THE other day I saw an old farmhouse in process of demolition in the parish of Altarnon, on the edge of the Bodmin moors. The great hall chimney was of unusual bulk, bulky as such chimneys usually are; and when it was thrown down it revealed the explanation of this unwonted size. Behind the back of the hearth was a chamber fashioned in the thickness of the wall, to which access might have been had at some time through a low walled–up doorway that was concealed behind the kitchen dresser and plastered over. This door was so low that it could be passed through only on all–fours.

Now the concealed chamber had also another way by which it could be entered, and this was through a hole in the floor of a bedroom above. A plank of the Moor could be lifted, when an opening was disclosed by which anyone might pass under the wall through a sort of door, and down steps into this apartment, which was entirely without light. Of what use was this singular concealed chamber? There could be little question. It was a place in which formerly kegs of smuggled spirits and tobacco were hidden. The place lies some fourteen or fifteen miles from Boscastle, a dangerous little harbour on the North Cornish coast, and about a mile off the main road from London, by Exeter and Launceston, to Falmouth. The coach travellers in old days consumed a good deal of spirits, and here in a tangle of lanes lay a little emporium always kept well supplied with a stock of spirits which had not paid duty, and whence the taverners along the road could derive the contraband liquor, with which they supplied the travellers. Between this emporium and the sea the roads—parish roads—lie over wild moors or creep between high hedges of earth, on which the traveller can step along when tbe lane below is converted into the bed of a stream, also on which the wary smuggler could stride whilst his laden mules and asses stumbled forward in the concealment of the deep–set lane.

A very curious feature of the coasts of the West of England, where rocky or wild, is the trenched and banked–up paths from the coves along the coast. These are noticeable in Devon and Cornwall and along the Bristol Channel. That terrible sea–front consists of precipitous walls of rock, with only here and there a dip, where a brawling stream has sawn its course down to the sea; and here there is, perhaps, a sandy shore of diminutive proportions, and the rocks around are pierced in all directions with caverns. The smugglers formerly ran their goods into these coves when the weather permitted, or the preventive men were not on the look–out. They stowed away their goods in the caves, and gave notice to the farmers and gentry of the neighbourhood, all of whom were provided with numerous donkeys, which were forthwith sent down to the caches, and the kegs and bales were removed under cover of night or of storm.

As an excuse for keeping droves of donkeys, it was pretended that the sea–sand and the kelp served as admirable dressing for the land, and no doubt so they did. The trains of asses sometimes came up laden with sacks of sand, but not infrequently with kegs of brandy.

Now a wary preventive man might watch too narrowly the proceedings of these trains of asses. Accordingly squires, yeomen, farmers, alike set to work to cut deep ways in the face of the downs, along the slopes of the hills, and bank them up, so that whole caravans of laden beasts might travel up and down absolutely unseen from the sea, and greatly screened from the land side.

Undoubtedly the sunken ways and high banks arc some protection against the weather. So they were represented to be, and no doubt greatly were the good folks commended for their consideration for the beasts and their drivers in thus, at great cost, shutting them off from the violence of the gale. Nevertheless, it can hardly be doubted that concealment from the eye of the coastguard was sought by this means quite as much as, if not more than, the sheltering the beasts of burden from the weather.

A few years ago an old church house was demolished. When it was pulled down it was found that the floor of large slate slabs in the lower room was undermined with hollows like graves, only of much larger dimensions, and these had served for the concealment of smuggled spirits. The clerk had, in fact, dug them out, and did a little trade on Sundays with selling contraband liquor from these stores.

From Baring–Gould's account, the superstructure for smuggling was extensive. You had secret rooms and secret chambers. You had caves, of course, but embanked ways from coast to farm to concell donkeys and men must have been laborious to construct.