The Legend and Reality of Smugglers’ Tunnels

Of all the aspects of local history that people ask me about, none is more frequently mentioned than smuggling; and when people bring up this topic, what is frequently on their mind are smugglers’ tunnels. There seems to be an insatiable desire to believe in the existence of smugglers’ tunnels, some of them stretching for infeasible distances.

Of course, if you think about it rationally, what would actually happen if you dug a tunnel, say, from the beach to an old landmark in Worthing, such as one of its old pubs or houses? Apart from the immediate logistical challenges faced in removing sand, shingle and chalk, what would happen almost immediately is that the tunnel would flood. I don’t think anyone thinks that smugglers two hundred years ago had access to effective pumping systems or the means of disposing of hundreds of gallons of water. I am sorry to say that the idea of smugglers’ tunnels, at least in our part of the country, holds

The Legend and Reality of Smugglers’ Tunnels up no better than the tunnels would themselves had they actually existed.

Charlotte Latham, the Victorian folklorist, who lived through some of the most active years of smuggling, gave credence to these tunnel stories in her paper, West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868. She described how smugglers had terrified the kitchen staff of one large house on the Sussex coast by entering the house through a concealed entrance. They moved furniture and crockery around when the servants were out of the room and they could be heard rolling their barrels of contraband along a tunnel below the floor. The staff believed they were being tormented by spirits from the underworld and fled in terror. Only the master of the house, wiser and calmer than his servants, realised the true nature of this apparent poltergeist activity. He lay in wait one night in the kitchen and seized one of the smugglers as he appeared through the kitchen floor in the dead of night, who, Latham says, then, ‘begged for mercy like a mortal.’

Latham believed that “the vigilance of the Preventive [Coastguard] Service has laid many ghosts in Sussex.” In other words, many of the hauntings and strange lights in the sky reported to her by the old people of her day were in reality the late night activities of smugglers, and that, “the present disposition to believe in ghost stories is in a great measure traditionary from the last generation, when smuggling was in the ascendant.”

Contemporary folklorist, Jacqueline Simpson has speculated that smugglers may have put about tales of tunnels to distract people from their real overland routes.

Perhaps Latham was trying too hard to identify cause and effect? It seems likely that the belief in tunnels and strange subterranean worlds predates smuggling. Contraband was stored by smugglers in various locations. Vertical shafts were dug and barrels of spirit lowered into them for storage, but that is a very different proposition to a tunnel extending for many hundreds of yards under streets and properties. Some inns and hotels had long cellars for storing wine and perishable grandparent had. It is frequently stated by the informant that the tunnel was ‘blocked off’ years ago and is no longer accessible. People cling determinedly to these family stories and take a dim view of those who question their veracity. Yet it seems unlikely that smugglers actually needed tunnels as a means of conveying contraband, as Worthing in those days was still semi-rural, street lighting was limited, and smugglers, being locals, knew every twitten, copse, and lonely spot along the shoreline, where they could ply their trade unmolested by the excise or coastguard men. Moreover, the belief in mysterious tunnels may preceded smuggling by several centuries.

Contemporary folklorist, Jacqueline Simpson has speculated that smugglers may have put about tales of tunnels to distract people from their real overland routes. Certainly Heene Lane (now Heene Road) was a dark, tree lined track way in the nineteenth century where smuggling gangs could carry on their business unobserved. Brandy Hole Lane, near Chichester, is still even today, a relatively obscure and shadowy thoroughfare –how much more so must it have been two hundred years ago.

Simpson also speculates on an earlier period in history, when Roman Catholic priests hid in ‘holes’ built into the country houses of the Catholic gentry. Charlotte Latham tells us of the supposed tunnel at Offington Hall (sadly demolished in 1960) which was supposed to reach to Cissbury Ring some two miles away.

At Offington, near Worthing, an old seat of the Delawarrs, a blocked-up passage, which can only be approached from the cellars, is still believed to communicate with the encampment on Cissbury Hill, and to be full of buried treasure. Some years ago, there was a story current of the then occupier of the house having offered half the money to be found there to anybody who would clear out the subterranean passage, and that several person had begun digging, but had all been driven back by large snakes springing at them with open mouths and angry hisses. food items, and I rather suspect that it is the discovery of old, bricked-up cellars, that have given rise to many stories locally of smugglers tunnels.

Sixty years later, in the 1920s, the story of the Offington Hall tunnel was still prevalent amongst the staff at the Hall, although by this time the tunnel was believed to lead not to Cissbury Ring, but to Sompting Abbots – about four miles away! Kathleen Underwood and Robert Double, who recorded these memories, thought that the tunnel had been built for those escaping religious persecution. They also remembered that the maids of the house in the 1920s were too terrified to go down to the cellars, even though they were assured that the tunnel had been blocked off many years before. It is easy to see how ancient legends of mysterious tunnels and buried treasure could be easily transferred to being the escape routes and hiding places of smugglers. Lastly, I think those who have tales of smugglers’ tunnels in their family should not be downcast if they are not actually ‘true’ stories, for they do represent some of our most ancient folklore. Folklore that is extremely old and buried deep in our collective unconscious.

Various local newspaper articles over the decades have carried stories about supposed smugglers’ tunnels. A case in point was in 1959, when the Worthing Herald reported that workmen building an extension to 116 Heene Road had discovered a tunnel leading in a southerly direction towards the sea. There was speculation that this led to the old Sportsman pub at 94 Heene Road. The old pub was demolished a few years later and replaced by a block of flats. Only the old flint walls survive to suggest possible smuggling activities of long ago and there is no trace of any tunnel.

Many people with a tunnel tale will add the caveat that they had never seen it for themselves, but their parent or

You can find more information about Chris and his books at https://historypeople.co.uk/ For more information about Worthing history, go to https://worthingvillagevoices.org.uk/ https://gofund.me/2789d5b5

Turning 40 can be scary, but last year, I gave myself an aim to make the GB 40+ Ladies’ Basketball Team for the World Championship tournament in Argentina in August 2023. AND the day after I turned 40, I found out I had done it!

After years of National League, University and Local League basketball, I had “retired” more times than I care to mention! This time, (yet again!) I was missing it!

I got back to playing and joined the second half of the local league season, in 2019, playing a couple of tournaments.

Like most of us, life has thrown me some curve balls. I lost my brother while I was at Uni and lost my mum way too early due to a progressive hereditary disease which thankfully I later found out at age 30, when I felt ready to check, that I do not carry it. I’d had injuries, heartbreak, the usual stuff!

Two years ago, I got really low. I struggled with waking up, working and general energy, brain fog was a killer. I had no passion to learn, retain information, no drive to do anything. I was supported and helped back to health by a nutritionist friend who was studying at the time, and realised my symptoms were likely to be caused by mould in my flat. There were no magic pills. When I realised, my sanity returned and my brain worked. I had some control over my life again, and some will to find passion and fun; where did I look? Basketball!!!!

It was time to find my passion, and I was so excited to play again. I asked to join a new ladies team, as the one I had played with a couple years before had disbanded. I joined a local men’s team and got to play with my husband, who is still fairly new to the sport. I went to some training camps in Nottingham for the GB Maxi Basketball program and was asked to attend a tournament in December 2022 in Murcia.

Fast forward to Jan 2023. I was turning 40! The last camp before World Pathway Selection was on my birthday weekend. Athough I’d been asked to go to the other tournament, I wasn’t sure I had a chance for the Worlds Team selection!

Waking up in Egypt on the Monday after the last training camp, one day after turning 40, I got the news! I WAS GOING TO ARGENTINA. So, it continues this story; training and working on the road to Worlds in Mar Del Plata, 2023. It hasn’t been easy, but it is and will be SO worth it! By Christie Petrucha-Rourk.

Christie has set up a gofundme to help with this self-funded trip to represent GB in the 40+ age category at the World Championships at the end of the summer. If you would like to support her, please visit gofundme.