Yorkshire has around 120 miles of coastline, and many parts of it are rugged and remote, making it ideal for smuggling. Smuggling was at its peak in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the activity was socially acceptable, highly lucrative, and the excise men were ineffective. The main goods smuggled into Yorkshire were brandy, Geneva, tea and tobacco.

Redcar: BU01067a

Very few smuggling records survive, probably because so few were created in the first place. Obviously the Crown kept records of intercepted and suspected runs, but we can only guess at the true scale of smuggling. The excise men of the time believed that almost everyone in Redcar, Saltburn, Marske, Staithes, Runswick and Robin Hood’s Bay was involved in some way in smuggling. For some people, it was their main occupation. There are stories of goods being brought ashore and moving through a village by tunnels and interconnected cellars, without once seeing daylight!

Robin Hood’s Bay: BU02135a