As for the Selsey Peninsula, and the district of flat lands and oozy creeks south of Chichester and on to Portsmouth, Nature would seem almost to have constructed the entire surroundings with the especial objects of securing the smugglers and confounding the customs. Here Sussex merges into Hampshire.
Among the many smuggling nooks along the Hampshire coast, Langston Harbour was prominent, forming, as it does, an almost landlocked lagoon, with creeks ramifying toward Portsea Island on one side and Hayling Island on the other. There still stands on a quay by the waterside at Langston the old “Royal Oak” inn, which was a favourite gathering-place of the “free-traders” of these parts, neighboured by a ruined windmill of romantic aspect, to which no stories particularly attach, but whose lowering, secretive appearance aptly accentuates the queer reputation of the spot.
The reputation of Langston Harbour was such that an ancient disused brig, the Griper, was permanently stationed here, with the coastguard housed aboard, to keep watch upon the very questionable goings and comings of the sailor-folk and fishermen of the locality. And not only these watery folk needed watching, but also the people of Havant and the oyster-fishers of Emsworth. Here, too, just outside Havant, at the village of Bedhampton, upon the very margin of the mud, stands an eighteenth-century mill. It would have been profitable for the coastguard to keep an eye upon this huge old corn-milling establishment, if the legends be at all true that are told of it. A little stream, issuant from the Forest of Bere, at this point runs briskly into the creek, after having been penned up and made to form a mill-leat. It runs firstly, moat-like, in front of a charming old house, formerly the miller’s residence, and then to the great waterwheel, and the mill itself, a tall, four-square building of red brick, not at all beautiful, but with a certain air of reserve all the more apparent, of course, because it is now deserted, bolted, and barred: steam flour-mills of more modern construction having, it may be supposed, successfully competed with its antiquated ways. But at no time, if we are to believe local legend, did Bedhampton Mill depend greatly upon its milling for prosperity. It was rather a smugglers’ storehouse, and the grinding of corn was, if not altogether an affectation, something of a by-product. You may readily understand the working of the contraband business, under these specious pretences, beneath the very noses of coastguard and excise; how goods brought up the creek and stored in this capacious hold could, without suspicion incurred, be taken out of store, loaded in among the flour-sacks in the miller’s wagons, and delivered wherever desired. Of course, that being the mill’s staple business, it is quite readily understood that when the business of smuggling declined such milling as went forward here did by no means suffice to keep the great building going.
The house, which appears now to be let as a country residence for the summer to persons who neither know nor care anything about the story of the place, has an odd inscription on its gable:
The gift of Mr. George
Judge at Stubbington
Farm at Portsea Hard, in
Memory of his very good Friend,
Mr. George Champ,
Senr. 1742.
That sporadic cases of smuggling long continued in these districts, as elsewhere, after the smuggling era was really ended, we may see from one of the annual reports issued by the Commissioners of Customs. The following incident occurred in 1873, and is thus officially described:
“On the top of a bank rising directly from highwater-mark in one of the muddy creeks of Southampton Water stands a wooden hut commanding a full view of it, and surrounded by an ill-cultivated garden. There are houses near, but the hut does not belong to them, and appears to have been built for no obvious purpose. An old smuggler was traced to this hut, and from that time, for nearly two months, the place was watched with great precaution, until at midnight, on May 28th, two men employed by us being on watch, a boat was observed coming from a small vessel about a mile from the shore. The boat, containing four men, stopped opposite the hut, landed one man and some bags, while the remainder of the crew took her some two hundred yards off, hauled her up, and then proceeded to the hut. One of our men was instantly despatched for assistance, while the other remained, watching. On his return with three policemen, the whole party went to the hut, where they found two men on watch outside and four inside, asleep. A horse and cart were also found in waiting, the cart having a false bottom. The six men were secured and sent to the police-station; a boat was then procured, the vessel whence the men had come was boarded, and found to be laden with tobacco and spirits. The result was that the vessel, a smack of about fifteen tons, with eighty-five bales of leaf-tobacco, six boxes of Cavendish, with some cigars and spirits, was seized, and four of the persons concerned in the transaction convicted of the offence.”
