A Smugglers Inn

When I found this book at the jumble sale in Eye last month I knew it would feature many of the pubs near where we lived on the coast. The one on the front cover is in Aldringham, just a couple of miles from the smallholding.

Although a lot of information in the book is about the pubs in the past, there is also plenty about how they are now and I'm thinking the book was perhaps sponsored by Southwold Brewers Adnams.

This large hotel/pub used by the smugglers back in the day is in Leiston. It's 5 minutes walk from where YD lives and sometimes we go there for Sunday lunch when I visit.

In the 1800's the licensees of popular inns would have been an important person in the community. Between 1732 and 1834 members of the  Gildersleeves family ran The White Horse. They were known to be valuable ally to the Sizewell Gap smugglers, bringing in contraband just a mile away on the coast. 

This is a bad photo due to reflection but its an ancient 18th Century flintlock pistol in a case on the wall in the pub.

And a facsimile of  a poster from that period.

 It's said that smuggled goods were stored under the platform of the Quaker Meeting House just across the road - unbeknown to the Quakers who met there of course.

The smuggled goods that passed through Leiston in the 1780's would have been mainly tea and there is an account of 80 horses being used to move the load inland.. During 1788 soldiers were billeted at The White Horse to help the Customs men but two soldiers were found to be too drunk to help - probably due to being given a lot of free liquor by Ann Gildersleeves - the licensee at that time.

On the 27th June that year in the Ipswich journal  there was  a report of an inquest held by the coroner, probably at the White Horse, where local coroners courts were often held at the time.

'there was an inquest at Leiston on Robert Debney and William Cooper who entered a cave used as a repository for smuggled goods, they were suffocated by the stench rising from it, a young man who went to their assistance was very near sharing the same fate, the cave was let down and covered over with horse manure in order to exclude excise officers'

 I don't think the White Horse has much smuggling going on in the C21 but the food they dish up for Sunday Lunch is always good!