Cornwall The Hairy Bikers' Pubs That Built Britain

'Pubs have been at the heart of Britain for hundreds of years.'

Cheers, mucker.

'In city taverns...'

'..and village inns...'

'..landlords have pulled pints for locals, travellers...'

..and, well, the odd 'King' or two.

'Meself included.'

Try and have a drink now!

LAUGHTER

'But with 30 pubs closing every week,

'our historic taverns need defending.'

Step! Step!

We're heading out to discover amazing stories

linked to the nation's watering holes.

-Not far to go.

-How far?

-Oh, a couple of miles.

-What?!

'From the Wars of the Roses...'

..to shipbuilding on the Clyde!

We've ditched our bikes so that we can sample an ale or two.

Get in!

This is very good.

LAUGHTER

'So join us for...'

'When you picture Cornwall, you see turquoise waters,

'stunning beaches, and dramatic coastal paths.'

'But this stunning county has a murky past.

'Its historic pubs, and many of those who drank in them,

'were at the heart of an illegal but fascinating industry.'

BOTH: Smuggling!

And down there is Polperro,

a tiny village with a very fishy history.

Yes, and even fishier secrets that go back over 200 years.

-CORNISH ACCENT

-Oi-ee! And I spies a pub

and a chance to unravel some very salty tales!

-Shall we go?

-Aye.

'We're heading back to the late 1700s,

'and to the village of Polperro on Cornwall's south coast.

'Fishing has always been central to life here, but back then,

'it wasn't just fish they were hauling in from the waters.'

'Smuggling had become Cornwall's unofficial industry,

'and local fishermen were sneaking in precious goods illegally

'from the continent. Why?

'Because they were broke.'

'As was Britain.

We'd just lost the American War of Independence,

'and were going head-to-head with France.

'To raise cash, the government raised taxes

'on salt and other goods,

'and as salt was used for preserving fish,

'the fishing industry was hit hard.'

'In remote and inaccessible Polperro, smuggling became rife.

'And the village pub was right at the heart of it all.'

Ah, the Three Pilchards.

I'll have you know, Si, in the early 1800s,

there were three pilchard processing factories in this very town.

Was there? So, really, if, like, you know, pilchards weren't your thing,

-you were pretty stuffed, then, weren't you, really?

-Mm-hm.

'The Three Pilchards, like many Cornish pubs, was a perfect

'and discreet meeting place.

'Most of the locals lived a double life -

'fishermen by day...

'and smugglers by night.'

'We've come here to meet local writer Jeremy Johns,

'who is himself a direct descendant of Polperro smugglers.'

-Very nice to meet you.

-Happy to meet you.

-Hi, Jeremy.

-Nice to meet you.

So, Jeremy, can you tell us about smuggling,

and more specifically, its connection with the Three Pilchards?

Well, the Three Pilchards was one of the three pubs around the harbour

that thrived here in Polperro when smuggling was at its height.

And in these pubs, smugglers would have met, exchanged tales

-of smuggling, and probably exchanged contraband at the same time.

-Mm-hm.

So pubs were at the centre of

the smuggling industry if you like, then?

Absolutely, because they were the meeting places of the smugglers

and the people who bought the contraband goods when they came ashore.

But why? Why was smuggling so prevalent?

Well, because it was a good way of making money.

I mean, if you're a poor fisherman,

and all you can do is land pilchards,

what better way of earning a little bit of extra money?

And nobody in Cornwall thought

there was anything remotely illegal about it.

You couldn't even get a Cornish jury to convict a smuggler.

'That's because even the magistrates were in on it.

'A fisherman could make a month's wages in just one night,

'sneaking in goods like brandy, rum and salt

'from France or the Channel Islands.'

'Pubs like the Three Pilchards were vital

'in keeping the whole operation ticking over,

'and the landlord was right in the thick of it.'

Charlie Jolliff,

who was the landlord of the Three Pilchards here in the 1830s...

-So he was the landlord of this pub?

-He was.

When he was saddling his horse at midnight,

everybody knew what Charlie was up to.

'But it wasn't just Charlie who was up to no good.'

'The whole operation was an extremely well coordinated affair,

'masterminded by Polperro's very own smuggling Don Corleone...'

Zephaniah Job.

He organised it on an industrial scale,

and over a period of 25 years, towards the end of the 18th century,

literally thousands and thousands of pounds,

-millions by today's value, was shipped through here.

-Wow.

'Zephaniah's business was so successful,

'he even had his own banknotes printed for use in Polperro.'

'Tell you what, Kingy, he must have been doing something right!'

These are two of the earliest banknotes ever produced.

'And at the centre of this story, another historic Polperro pub -

'the Crumplehorn Inn.'

'Zephaniah Job lived in this building when it was a mill.'

'And 100 years after his death,

'a stash of paperwork was found in this attic.'

'Job's immaculate accounts tell us

'how big a business smuggling had become.

'He was worth a cool £7,500,

'making him almost a millionaire in today's money.'

Ah, shiver me timbers and twist me sprigs!

Takes you back in time, don't it, Polperro?

It does, mate, it does.

And you can tell that smugglers would have favoured

this sort of place with its narrow streets and passages.

Oh, yeah, and around every corner there lies a pub,

-and within every pub lies a story.

-Get in.

'And every pub sign tells a story too.'

'And a big clue to our fascinating past.

'Here are three of our Cornish favourites.'

'The Miners Arms in Mithian gets its name from

'Cornwall's ancient tin mining industry.

'Does what it says on the tin, then, Si!'

'The Sir Humphrey Davy in Penzance is named after the inventor of

'the ingenious Davy Lamp,

'which saved thousands of coal miners' lives.'

'He was a Cornishman and all!

'And as for Cornwall's fisher folk, well, they used to

'divvy up their earnings at the Old Success Inn in Sennen Cove.'

'And if the pickings were slim,

'then there was always another way of making a bob or two.'

'Indeed there was, Kingy.

'Back on our Polperro pub crawl,

'we're still on the trail of smugglers,

'and the tricky task the government had of trying to stop them.'

'That unenviable job lay in the hands of the revenue men -

'tax collectors employed by the Crown.'

I tell you what, mate, it's like a game of cops and robbers, isn't it?

Yeah, it's like a game of cat and mouse

-amongst the mean streets of Pol-perr-oh!

-Right, this is it.

What do you want to be?

Do you want to be a revenue man

or do you want to be a mean, mean smuggler?

Smuggler, cos I was born to be bad!

Miaow!

'OK, Dave, I'm coming after ya.

'You've got a five-second head start.'

'You can't catch me!'

'I'm behind you!'

'Joking aside, the battle between the revenue men and the smugglers

'was a serious and often very dangerous business.

'I'm meeting a Polperro fisherman who knows all about the tough life

'of a smuggler and the perils they faced at sea.'

Is it Chris? Dave. Nice to meet you.

'Well, mate, while you're messing about on a boat,

'I'm staying on the right side of the law.

'The nooks and crannies of Cornwall's coast were

'perfect for sneaking in contraband.

'And here at the remote Lansallos Cove,

'two miles west of Polperro,

'brandy and rum were sneaked ashore by the barrel load.

'I'm meeting ex-customs officer Mark Bullen...'

-Now, you must be Mark.

-Yep, that's me, yep.

'..who knows a thing or two about policing smugglers.'

-Absolutely beautiful, isn't it?

-It is stunning, yeah.

Absolutely beautiful. So, Mark, tell me about the revenue men.

Who were they? Where did they come from?

On the shore, you would have had what they called riding officers.

-Right.

-There would have been maybe one for every 10, 12 miles of coast.

And what organisa...? One to every 10 or 12 miles of coast?

-In this part of the world, yes. Not many.

-That's not a lot.

-It's not a lot.

-No wonder smuggling was worth a giggle.

-Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

-Wow!

So, this customs officer,

-this riding customs officer stumbles upon this smuggling operation.

-Yeah.

How many people would he be faced with on the beach?

Well, if you had a really large cargo,

maybe two or three hundred kegs,

you might have a group of 100-150 men that had gathered together,

and the riding officer's got a pistol and a sword - and a horse.

Hold on a minute, Mark, let me get this very clear.

There was one riding officer, with a horse, a sword,

and a single shot pistol,

and 150 or so armed men smuggling on the beach?

Yeah, that's right, yeah,

so odds were pretty much in favour of the smugglers!

-Yeah, definitely don't fancy those odds.

-No!

-Dear me.

What would you do?! 'Oh, hi! Erm...!'

-MARK LAUGHS Do you know what I mean?

-Yeah.

'As well as riding officers who patrolled the shoreline

'on their Jack Jones, the revenue had ships, or cutters,

'stationed along the coast, trying to catch the smugglers red handed.'

So, Mark, what would be the incentive of the lads

on the cutters to capture smugglers and their vessels?

Well, essentially, it was a financial one,

because if they captured a smuggling vessel and all its contraband,

they would get a seizure reward, and the commander would get

maybe as much as a year's salary from that one seizure.

SI WHISTLES

-So, a good incentive.

-That's worth it.

-It is.

-Isn't it?

-Yeah.

Whose side to be on? What are the odds?

Be a smuggler, be a customs man.

-Be a smuggler - smuggler sounds a bit more...

-Smuggler, I think, yeah.

-It's a bit more exciting, isn't it?

-Definitely.

'Oh, life as a smuggler certainly was exciting, Si,

'navigating the treacherous Cornish coast and plotting down the local.

'The smugglers relied on all their years of experience at sea.

'Polperro fisherman Chris Curtis knows these waters

'better than anyone, and he's going to tell me more.'

Fishing goes well with the smuggling,

because the fishermen were the ones who could navigate the waters,

and you'd need to know what you were doing to actually...

Easy, yes. I mean, they were brought up as boys on the water.

They knew every bit of the water,

the depth of the water, the seasons...

They would navigate by stars, by the compass,

and, er, they didn't need any sat navs -

not that they knew about it!

-Aye, aye!

-And, er, everything was done by sail and wind.

And are these dangerous waters?

You mix the weather in, the storms, and there were a lot caught out.

-And in those days there were quite a few fatalities as well.

-Yes.

'Maritime records show that the Cornish coastline was

'the most dangerous in Britain.

'A combination of wind, weather and waves wrecked countless ships,

'but that's not putting me and Chris off!'

One can imagine what it was like for smugglers putting up with this!

Can you imagine it?

I mean, you know, going over the side of the ship,

being chased by the revenue men...

-Aye.

-Yeah, life doesn't get any better than that, Dave.

Well, I don't know, I'm glad we've got an engine!

'I've loved fishing ever since I was a boy,

'but the only thing I used to smuggle

'was the occasional biscuit out to the riverside!

'But I can't pass up this opportunity

'to see if the fish are nibbling.'

-Chris, I've got one on!

-Oh, go on, Dave! Get him in!

Oo-ooh!

-You've got a whopper there, Dave!

-I've got something.

-Oh, I can see him, Dave.

-Bloody hell, aye.

-A nice cod.

-It's a beauty.

-It's a beauty.

-Phwoar!

-Go on, Dave, bring him in, mate!

-Yes!

We've got cod and chips for tea,

and the only way to eat cod is straight from the sea like this.

Cod, chips and a visit to the pub.

Hold him up, mate, it's your fish.

Happy days.

Mr King, how's your day going?

'Well, there's no fish on the menu here, mucker,

'but Mark's taken me down to the shore to show me

'just how the smugglers transported their booty inland.'

So, Mark, what is this place? It's amazing!

This is, erm, this is Lansallos Cove, and as you can see,

it's sort of a perfect place to land kegs of brandy.

It is! I mean, it's perfect in the sense that it's, that it's very,

-er, remote.

-It's very remote, you've got a flat beach...

-Yeah.

..so to actually get the stuff off your vessel

and then start to bring it up to take it inland.

'It's reckoned as much as half a million gallons of French brandy

'were smuggled into Cornwall every year.'

These are examples of sort of 10-gallon barrels.

Hold on, it's Dave! That's amazing, look!

SI LAUGHS It looks like him!

That is amazing! Look at that! He's out there being a smuggler!

-This is what they called a 'tub man.'

-So, this is...

Steady on, I've lost weight, you know.

So, a tub man would be...?

A man would be... Basically to physically carry the barrels,

and often they would be roped together like this.

When they brought them over on the Channel Islands,

they'd all be ready to...

-So it's quick.

-Exactly. Ready to go, over the shoulders.

Two of those would have weighed about a hundred weight.

So you're talking a substantial amount.

'Each 25 kilo barrel still had to be transported

'a couple of miles or so up to the village.

'But the smugglers had one more clever trick up their sleeves.

'This ancient hidden path carved through the rocks.'

Originally that probably would have been cut by farmers

bringing their carts down to collect seaweed and sand to take back

-and put on the fields as organic fertiliser.

-Sure, sure.

But, obviously, perfect way for the smugglers to get their stuff away

-on carts, and also, the double advantage, it's sunken.

-Right.

So, a riding officer'd come along, wouldn't actually see them.

'And while Dave's messing about on a fishing trip,

'Mark's got me grafting.'

-It's not easy, this, is it?

-It's not.

I mean, there's easier ways to make a living. God, right...

-OK?

-Yeah.

-Not far to go.

-How far?

-Oh, a couple of miles?

-What?!

Flippin 'eck! Slippy, like, isn't it? Yeah, it's not the...

-Stop moaning, just get on with it.

-Honestly!

-It would be easier, surely...

-You can have a rest here.

-What?

-Just pop it down there, have a rest.

I tell you what, the things I do...

to tell a story.

'The smugglers weren't on their ownsome like me. Oh, no.

'As many as 150 would lug the barrels up this path.

'Most went inland to supply the country.

'But much of the booze would end up...

'well, you've guessed it, in the pub.'

What's really coming to the fore here is how the, the pubs

were absolutely at the epicentre of this smuggling kind of industry.

Yeah, ultimately, cos they were the retail outlets.

-That's the point, this is where this stuff went.

-Yeah.

So that you would be able to go to the pub

and you pretty well knew that you were drinking smuggled brandy.

'Well, I suppose I'd better get this barrel to the boozer, then.

'You know, maybe a swift half's in order.'

'Back at the Three Pilchards...'

MEN SING

'..the local choir are giving it laldy!'

# ..to sit at his hand

# For this is my... #

'The Polperro Wreckers meet in village pubs for regular singsongs,

'keeping their locals very much at the heart of the community.'

# For this is my Cornwall

# And this is my home. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, gentlemen, you're known as the Wreckers, why is that?

Is that because of the state you get yourself into

with all the laughing gravy or what?

-Well, no, we just thought it was a nice name for a pub group.

-Aye.

Erm, the Wreckers has come from a choir which has been

established in Polperro for nearly 100 years.

We're very proud of our Cornish roots, you know,

-we like to sing about that.

-Well, so you should.

-You're musical smugglers, aren't you?

-Yeah!

Is the culture and is the history really important to you,

-of Polperro?

-Very much so. We have a lot of fun doing this

-and we've raised a lot of money for charity.

-Fantastic.

-It is great fun.

-We'd like you to sing with us, actually.

-You wouldn't, would you?

Yes, we've heard that you've both got good voices, so...

Somebody once said I've got a voice like a broken drill bit.

THEY LAUGH

Well, I may add something on the bass section.

Listen, mate, you've got a good baritone,

and nobody can take that away from you.

Aye, it's the tone that's questionable, though.

That's it! The 'bari' is all right, but the 'tone?' Not entirely sure.

Oh, we'd be privileged to sing with you.

-Come and join us.

-Thank you, thank you.

# So let's hear it for Trelawney

# May his army never die

# Let's hear it for Trevithick

# And his engine steaming by Woo-woo! #

'Well, we're singing all the right notes...'

'Just not necessarily in the right order!'

# Let's hear it for the miners

# Who we hope will mine again. #

-Cheers, lads!

-Cheers!

-That was brilliant! Cheers!

'Great British boozers are unique,

'but they're nothing without their regulars.

'Let's meet a local who loves his local.'

'Meet Pete Darracott.

'The Admiral Benbow in Penzance is his favourite watering hole.

'He's been a regular for nigh on 50 years.'

I love the place.

It's a part of me and I'm a part of the Admiral Benbow,

I love it so much, and I'm just going to go and have a drink.

I'm thirsty.

'Quite right, mate.

'This Grade II listed 17th century building is full of characters.'

How are you doing?

'And the walls are adorned with all manner of maritime objects

'salvaged from shipwrecks.'

What makes this place quite unique is, obviously,

the decor and the fittings, but also the clients that come in.

We all love this place and we're all part of the atmosphere,

we make our own atmosphere within it.

'But there's more to this pub than meets the eye.

'Underneath the Benbow lies a dark and mysterious surprise.'

'A tunnel dug out by the Benbow brandy men,

'a 19th century smuggling gang who sneaked contraband up to the pub

'from Penzance harbour.'

This tunnel was a two-way tunnel.

They cut recesses in, as you can see one here,

so you could stand back

and let somebody go through with an empty barrel

or let somebody come up the tunnel with a full one.

Everything came up this tunnel -

brandy and silk, tobacco, money, everything.

All the stuff came into the Admiral Benbow.

'At the last count, three other British boozers have claimed

'the name of the famous Admiral.'

'As did Robert Louis Stevenson for the name of the pub

'in his classic novel Treasure Island.'

'And it's another great work of fiction that takes us to the

'final stop on our smugglers' pub crawl of Cornwall.

'We've left Polperro, and are now following the route of

'the contraband 20 miles north to the top of Bodmin Moor.'

As smuggling pubs go, they don't get much more famous than this.

Aye. I don't know why they called it Jamaica Inn, though.

-There's nothing Jamaican around here.

-I'm perished!

'This chilling location was perfect for discreetly shifting

'smuggled contraband,

'and for inspiring the most famous smuggling novel of all time.'

'Its author, Daphne Du Maurier, stayed here in 1930.

'Six years later, her best-selling novel, Jamaica Inn, was published.

'Author Bret Hawthorne is an expert on Du Maurier,

'and has come to tell us more about the role this famous pub played

'in her most iconic work.'

You know, Bret, I find the tales of smuggling completely

and utterly fascinating.

Do you think Daphne Du Maurier felt the same

-when she arrived here?

-I'm sure she did.

She'd been in Cornwall since she was about 20, she'd been down in Fowey,

-so she would have heard a lot before she even arrived.

-Yes.

And then she gets here and, obviously,

over the front of the fire, they're talking about smugglers

and things that used to go on...

So, yeah, I'm sure that inspired her.

Well, I mean, look at the building itself,

I mean, it's inspirational in itself.

'To avoid detection, the smugglers had 61 secret routes from the coast

'across the moor to this inn.'

Can you tell me how the very fibre of Jamaica Inn

inspired Daphne Du Maurier?

If you just look at it, I mean, it's clad in black,

it's got a black cloak on. It looks like a villain already.

-I mean, it's a character in itself.

-Yes.

-And not for nothing.

She doesn't call the book after one of the heroines

or after Joss, the landlord.

The book is "Jamaica Inn."

I think because the inn, the pub, is here now, it grounds the book,

-it makes the book even more real.

-Yes, absolutely.

Your imagination can run riot here.

'Today, the Jamaica Inn pulls in punters from all over the world,

'keen to soak up the atmosphere that inspired Du Maurier so much.'

-Kingy, it's another proper lovely pub.

-It is.

-Whoa...!

'Time to get out of the cold

'and sample some refreshments from back in those smuggling days.'

'Those barrels of contraband rum and brandy, like the one

'I was lugging earlier, would get contaminated with salty seawater.'

'Luckily, a fruity solution helped salvage the booty,

'and Louisa from St Austell brewery is here to give us

'a taste of this smuggler's cocktail.'

-Hello, Louisa.

-Hello.

-Hello, I'm Dave.

-Hi, Dave.

Louisa, hi, I'm Si, how are you?

-Nice to meet you.

-Hi, Si, nice to meet you.

-Tell us the origins of the rum shrub.

-Ah, a rum shrub.

Well, a rum shrub goes back to the days of smuggling, which was rife

in Cornwall, and they would hide their barrels of rum under the sea.

But this had the problem that they'd then taste of salt,

so how could they get rid of the taste of salt?

They used fruit - oranges, lemons - that they could easily get from

the Med, and also put some spices in,

cinnamon and nutmeg, and...

I think this might taste quite nice,

-cos we love a bit of savoury-sweet these days.

-We do, that's true.

-We've got salt caramel. I'm looking forward to this.

-Yeah, so am I.

-Well, do you want to see how it's made?

-Oh, yeah.

'For a traditional rum shrub recipe, take your salty rum and mix it

'with the rinds and juices of citrus fruits as well as some spices.'

'Leave it for three days and then add some sugar.

'And by 'some' I actually mean quite a lot -

'400g per litre.

'This gives a higher concentration of flavour and helps preserve it.'

'Store it for about a week,

'and it's ready to drink when you add a bit more rum

'for good measure.'

-Cheers, mate.

-Cheers.

-Oh, yes.

-Oh, yeah.

-That's much more palatable.

-Any taste of salt?

-No.

-No.

-OK, so that's how they drank it.

It's very syrupy, and I suppose the longer that you leave it

the more dense it's going to be.

-Yeah, and the concentration of the sugar and the spices.

-Yeah.

-Wow.

-Oh, aye, it's nice, actually.

-Mm.

-Mm.

Oh, rub-a-dub-dub, I like your rum shrub.

SI LAUGHS

-Fascinating stories.

-It is fascinating.

It's the sense of smuggling as an industry that I kind of quite love.

When it's into the drink culture of that community, I mean,

it's absolutely entrenched then, isn't it, you know?

Yeah, and I believe that pubs should still be the heart of the community.

-Hear hear.

-You know, for the church, the industry, the social life,

and, you know, this is one example of...

all these hundreds of years ago,

with something that was criminal, it was all working quite nicely.

And everyone was involved, like you said,

so very much heart of the community.

-Cheers, Louisa.

-Cheers.

-Cheers, Louisa.

'But life was to change.

'By the mid-1800s, the creation of the coastguard, lower taxes,

'and more affordable living

'meant smuggling in Cornwall pretty much died out.'

'But thankfully the amazing stories and legends live on,

'especially through the history and heritage of its wonderful pubs.'

Well, that warms the cockles, mate, doesn't it?

Well, yes, it certainly was a fitting end to

-our historical pub crawl.

-Mate, I've got one for you.

Do you know what a 'kiddlywink' is?

A what?!

Well, a kiddlywink is a Cornish name for a licensed premises

that's only allowed to serve beer, you see?

But if you give the barman...

..a wink, you'd get a rum chaser underneath the counter, you know.

-Ee, ya clever sausage!

-Oh, aye.

-Cheers!

-Cheers, mate, cheers.