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The most notorious smuggling coasts of Britain during the 18th century were in east Kent, and in particular those bordering on Romney Marsh. Some reasons for this are obvious; the Kent shores lay nearest to continental suppliers and many of the beaches were ideal for undisturbed landings. Wool from huge flocks of sheep on the marshes could be shipped over to France within days of shearing, whatever the law might say. But in addition, the economy of Kent around 1700 was depressed. Iron smelting at Wealden centres such as Lamberhurst, and the cloth-making industry of Tenterden and Cranbrook were dying. The harbours of the ancient and once proud Cinque Ports Confederation had been closed by mud and shingle.
Sandwich, New Romney and Winchelsea had already lost their seabourne trade, and the haven at Hythe was finally abandoned in 1674. At Rye the citizens were to spend sixty thousand pounds in an unsuccessful bid to develop a new harbour, begun by John Smeaton in 1769 but abandoned in 1788. Inevitable there was a desperate need for alternative employment; exporting wool to continental clothiers proved profitable and easy, despite the fact that after 1662 this was a felony, at times punishable by death. Large scale importing of contraband came later, and initially as a means of paying for the wool.
As the two-way trade developed, the seamen of Deal, Dover and Folkestone crewed the smuggling vessels, while labourers in the countryside around were readily recruited as landers and porters. Until the preventive services were fully organised, the best landing sites were the long stretches of sand and shingle which began in the north with the wide sweep of Sandwich Bay. Here, waterside Deal had grown up in the 17th century specifically to serve ships waiting in The Downs. The great crescent of shoals known as the Goodwin Sands, though the graveyard of so many vessels, provided a sheltered anchorage for sailing ships awaiting a favourable wind, and Deal seamen rowed out with messages and fresh supplies, using boats launched from their shingle beach.
They also went to the help of ships in distress. In the great storm of 1703, when sixteen naval vessels and forty other ship foundered off the Goodwins with the loss of two thousand one hundred and sixty eight lives, the seamen of Deal saved two hundred men. Unfortunately, they also acquired a considerable reputation as hovellers (looters) and smugglers. In particular, they were adept at trading with vessels homeward bound from the East and West Indies. So much was being 'lost' in this way that it became normal practice for vessels belonging to the East India Company to be escorted through the Straits of Dover and up the Thames to London.
The open beaches of Sandwich Bay were ideal landing sites, and the smaller St Margaret's Bay and Langdon and Fan Bays further south were also used, although the surrounding chalk cliffs made these less accessible. At Dover itself the harbour mouth opened to the west of the town; it was patently rash to land a cargo on the beach east of this, under the eyes of the castle garrison and close to the gaol and Custom House. Nevertheless, smuggling ships did come into the port, and at times goods were taken up the cliffs west of the harbour, and at Lydden Spout.
The most popular beaches began at East Wear Bay, beside what was then the small fishing village of Folkestone, and continued round past Sandgate and Hythe, and along the three-mile artificial embankment know as Dymchurch Wall. Here the core of the sea defences is thought to be Roman, but it has been strengthened and increased in height at various periods since. Strictly speaking, Romney Marsh is the northern section only of the triangular lowland running out to Dungeness. It had been reclaimed by the sea by Roman times. Rhee Wall, which forms its southern boundary and carries the road from New Romney to Appledore, was probably a natural feature which the Romans built up further.
This provided the most direct route by which contraband could be carried inland towards Tenterden, High Halden, Biddenden and Cranbrook (all notorious smuggling centres). However, a particular advantage here was the way the smugglers could outwit pursuit be using local people as pilots through the maze of drainage ditches. Another advantage was the way the shores of the marsh faced two different directions, and so gave a choice of landing site, according to the prevailing wind.
South of Dymchurch the coastline in 1700 differed substantially from the present one. All that remained of the harbour which had once served the Cinque Port of New Romney was a shallow bay, opening to the sea between the markers of Littlestone and Greatstone. Lydd had grown along a shingle bank which was once virtually an island, and still retained its contact with the sea. As at Deal, the seamen at Lydd launched their small boats over greased timbers direct from the beach. The present Pilot Inn, on the road to Dungeness, is a successor to a much older inn of the same name, for it was common for vessels to take on a pilot here before entering the Straits of Dover. It was equally common for the boat taking the pilot out to return with useful items from its cargo! Walland Marsh, south of Rhee Wall, , had mainly been reclaimed during the medieval period, and the parallel roads and tracks (particularly near Brookland) are the result of a succession of 'innings'.
The extremely sharp bend on the A259 at the county boundary (Kent Ditch) is one of the points where carts waited for the men carrying goods across the most recently reclaimed marsh behind Camber. The favourite landing sites along the southern coast of the marsh were at Jew's Gut (now Jury's Gut) just east of Camber, and the sandy beach at Camber itself, where the dunes gave good cover for men awaiting a landing.
Rye and Winchelsea were separated from the marsh both by the county boundary and the wide tidal estuary of the river Rother, but shared much of its way of life. In 1700, Rye was still a seaport, with commercial quays on its west flank and the fishermen's quarter below the cliffs to the east. There was no bridge linking Rye to the marsh throughout the smuggling years. Instead a ferry ran across to east Guldeford (where every house is said to be an owler's). The ferryman's house at Rye has survived, and can still be seen near the river bank among the boatyards, below Ypres Tower.
South of Rye the smuggling shores continued along Pett Level to the cliffs at Fairlight. Contemporary maps show that carts could be taken down to the beach at Fairlight Cove (immediately east of the village) and also at the foot of Fairlight Glen. Some accounts of smuggling here distinguish between episodes at 'Fairlight Steps' and those in Covehurst or Govers Bay. Both were certainly used, particularly by the owlers, but coastal erosion and large landslides have since substantially altered the coast here, making the former inaccessible and the other beach difficult to reach on foot.
This is the background against which the different phases of the smuggling story in east Kent were to unfold. From 1680 to 1720 the interest is focused on the owling trade in the marsh and the activities of the Mayfield gang. By 1730, the main development was the rise of other major gangs, particularly that based at Hawkhurst. Fifty years later it was the tea smugglers, and especially the men of Deal who most worried the government. The final phase is essentially the story of the Coast Blockade, and the activities of the last short-lived gang based at Aldington. So strongly were the preventive services organised here that smuggling was virtually extinguished by 1830.
The attempts to stop wool smuggling from east Kent began well before 1700. William Carter, who was a clothier, and so had an interest in preventing raw wool from reaching his foreign competitors, obtained the necessary warrants to arrest the men involved. In one of his early ventures in 1669 he seized the captain of a ship at Dover, but was forced to allow his prisoner to escape when the women of Folkestone hurled stones at him. He was more successful during the 1680s, seizing twenty French and ten English ships involved in the trade.
His most famous exploit took place in 1688 after he had arrested a group of owlers on Romney Marsh. Carter took them before the Mayor of Romney, who granted the smugglers bail. The same night Carter and his men made a further attempt to stop wool being shipped, but were attacked as they rode through Lydd. An ugly situation was developing, and the Mayor's son advised Carter to leave Lydd early next morning and take refuge at Rye. Though Carter accepted his advice, his party was chased by fifty armed horsemen as they rode past Camber to Guldeford Ferry. Here they were rescued in the nick of time by boats from other vessels anchored in the harbour.
The government finally took action in 1698. Riding Officers were appointed under Henry Baker (Surveyor General for Kent), who were to enforce the controls imposed, with the help of mounted troops. It was forbidden for anyone living within fifteen miles of the coast to buy wool, and farmers within ten miles of the sea had to account for their fleeces within three days of a shearing. There were all manner of ways to evade these controls, but, for a time at least, owling was reduced. In 1703 Henry Baker was sufficiently confident to recommend that the number of Riding Officers could be reduced to save money. He was soon proved wrong.
When Daniel Defoe rode through Hythe towards Rye in the 1720s he saw Riding Officers and dragoons searching the marshes for wool smugglers '... as if they were huntsmen beating up their game ...' Though the officers sometimes scored successes, they were usually so outnumbered that they could only stand and watch as the wool was carried on board ship straight from the horses' backs, and taken immediately to France.
At this point we need to take up the story of the Mayfield gang and its leader. Gabriel Tomkins had been a humble bricklayer from Tunbridge Wells, but must have been a highly intelligent and capable organiser. He became gang leader well before 1717, and his men were known to be successful owlers and Jacobite sympathisers. Ten leading members were farmers and regarded as men of substance. They made frequent forays to the coast in parties of twenty or thirty, well armed and riding in open defiance of the law, to load the wool onto waiting French vessels. Brandy, silks and other goods were brought back in a profitable two-way trade. The gang often used the beaches near Lydd and Fairlight, but from 1717 to 1721 they were also running goods near Hastings, Eastbourne and Seaford. Though ruthless, they were not wantonly cruel, and when faced with opposition preferred to tie up or disarm their opponents, and free them once the run was completed.
In 1717 Gabriel Tomkins was indicted for the murder of Riding Officer Gerard Reeves during an affray at Langney Bridge near Eastbourne, but he was subsequently acquitted. In January 1721 he was involved, with other gang members, in a struggle with Excisemen at the Swan Inn at Reigate and another episode at Bletchingly nearby. Two months later, Jacob Walter and Thomas Bigg (two other important gang members) came ashore from a French vessel near Dungeness Lighthouse, were seized and taken in chains to the George Inn at Lydd.
While they were being held in an upper room there in the charge of six armed officers, nine other smugglers burst in, raced upstairs firing their guns, and in the ensuing confusion, succeeded in freeing Walter and Bigg. Gabriel Tomkins, who was evidently one of the rescue party, was shot in the arm. In September 1721 Tomkins, along with other gang members, was intercepted near Burwash, pursued and finally captured in a lane at Nutley on Ashdown Forest. The capture of Gabriel Tomkins effectively broke up the Mayfield gang, though his brother and other gang members continued operation from the Horsham and West Chiltington area of West Sussex. Gabriel Tomkins himself was soon to reappear in east Kent, but in a very different role.