0:00:34 > 0:00:39This is Robin Hood's Bay, a cascade of cottages and narrow lanes
0:00:39 > 0:00:40carved into a cliff.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43It's the prettiest kind of place to visit,
0:00:43 > 0:00:45but don't let its innocent facade fool you.
0:00:46 > 0:00:53For over 100 years, smuggling was the unofficial town trade.
0:00:53 > 0:00:58From the early 1700s, contraband regularly arrived here from all over Europe.
0:00:58 > 0:01:03Because of its location, Robin Hood's Bay could have been custom designed for illegal imports.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12It was one of the few safe havens on the east coast -
0:01:12 > 0:01:17a broad bay protected by massive headlands and backed by inaccessible moorland.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20And the cliffs made perfect lookouts for the smugglers.
0:01:20 > 0:01:25From here, they could signal to their accomplices out at sea
0:01:25 > 0:01:29and at the same time, watch out for the revenue men.
0:01:29 > 0:01:32Smuggling was at its peak in the 1700s,
0:01:32 > 0:01:37when the government slapped hefty import duties on luxury goods like silk, tobacco and tea
0:01:37 > 0:01:41to pay for its almost constant wars with France.
0:01:41 > 0:01:47Local knowledge gave the smugglers access to a labyrinth of secret routes.
0:01:47 > 0:01:51Under cover of darkness, they could creep up the beach with their booty
0:01:51 > 0:01:53and disappear into this tunnel.
0:01:54 > 0:02:00They ventured into drainage tunnels like these at enormous risk.
0:02:00 > 0:02:02Smuggling carried the death sentence.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05But the rewards were worth the risks.
0:02:05 > 0:02:08Bringing in just a pound of tea
0:02:08 > 0:02:11would have netted the smuggler the equivalent of a week's wages.
0:02:11 > 0:02:15At one point, 80% of all the tea drunk in Britain
0:02:15 > 0:02:17was imported illegally.
0:02:19 > 0:02:22The smugglers turned this tunnel to their advantage.
0:02:22 > 0:02:27I'm looking for holes in the ceiling above my head like this.
0:02:27 > 0:02:32They could creep up here and you can imagine them stuffing rum and tobacco
0:02:32 > 0:02:34up through here into the house above.
0:02:34 > 0:02:38It's very ingenious.
0:02:42 > 0:02:46It wasn't just the men who struggled through tunnels like this,
0:02:46 > 0:02:49that made money out of smuggling.
0:02:49 > 0:02:54Pretty much everybody in the village had their hands dirty.
0:02:54 > 0:02:58the boatmen, the storer, even the local squire,
0:02:58 > 0:03:00who lived here at Thorpe Hall.
0:03:00 > 0:03:06He financed the smuggling and would have expected a good return on his investment.
0:03:06 > 0:03:11Here in the grounds of the squire's house is an underground chamber
0:03:11 > 0:03:14where he stashed his share of the booty. Look!
0:03:14 > 0:03:20It's carefully lined in stone. You can imagine it packed with gin, tobacco, brandy and silk.
0:03:20 > 0:03:25By 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars,
0:03:25 > 0:03:27soldiers were redeployed as excise men
0:03:27 > 0:03:29putting a stop to large-scale smuggling...
0:03:29 > 0:03:32but not entirely.
0:03:32 > 0:03:36Today, Customs and Excise reckon nearly £4 billion-worth
0:03:36 > 0:03:41of revenue is lost every year to illegal imports of tobacco and alcohol.
0:03:44 > 0:03:49But there's never been a shortage of legal ways to make a living along this coast
0:03:49 > 0:03:52if you've got the ingenuity.
0:03:52 > 0:03:58While the villagers of Robin Hood's Bay were lining their pockets by smuggling,
0:03:58 > 0:04:01the people here at Ravenscar, just three miles down the coast,
0:04:01 > 0:04:05made themselves rich with a startling scientific discovery.
0:04:08 > 0:04:13These are the remains of one of the UK's very first chemical factories.
0:04:13 > 0:04:17Anthropologist, Alice Roberts, has come to see what's left.
0:04:20 > 0:04:22400 years ago, the cloth and wool trade
0:04:22 > 0:04:25formed the backbone of the British economy.
0:04:25 > 0:04:29None of it could have happened without an industry that grew up here.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32I'm meeting archaeologist, John Buglass,
0:04:32 > 0:04:35who knows the extraordinary role Ravenscar played
0:04:35 > 0:04:37in saving Britain's cloth industry.
0:04:37 > 0:04:42I have to say, John, this looks rather disturbingly like a quarry.
0:04:42 > 0:04:46I don't really understand how rock can have anything to do with cloth.
0:04:46 > 0:04:49It is a quarry, it's an alum quarry.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53The type of rock that's here is actually shale.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57- Shale is a sedimentary rock which is laid down on the seabed.- Yeah.
0:04:57 > 0:05:02Hidden inside the shale are crystals or salts of aluminium.
0:05:02 > 0:05:06- Right.- The aluminium salts can be used as a mordant in the dyeing industry.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09- What's a mordant? - Basically it's a glue.
0:05:09 > 0:05:13It acts to stick the dye molecules in the cloth.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17It stops the colours fading and it maintains the brightness.
0:05:17 > 0:05:20So what is the actual substance that they're after?
0:05:20 > 0:05:24- What they're after is this material. It's called alum.- Right.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27That's a crystal of pure, naturally occurring alum.
0:05:27 > 0:05:29Why don't they use natural alum then?
0:05:29 > 0:05:32- Natural alum doesn't occur in this country.- Yeah.
0:05:32 > 0:05:38They're having to bring it in from other places. So they'd try to seek an alternative source
0:05:38 > 0:05:41in order to break the monopoly.
0:05:41 > 0:05:46You'd have gangs of men working up against the quarry face,
0:05:46 > 0:05:51pickaxes and shovels, digging it out, shovelling it into barrows.
0:05:51 > 0:05:56- Then they'd burn it for three months.- Why are they burning it?
0:05:56 > 0:06:01That changes the chemical composition slightly.
0:06:01 > 0:06:07They can then extract the salts. It's very acidic, so they have to burn alkali in there.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11- They had a special ingredient they used for that.- Really?
0:06:11 > 0:06:16That "special ingredient" comes courtesy of the production team.
0:06:16 > 0:06:21We're trying to make alum on this site for the first time in 150 years.
0:06:21 > 0:06:23We'll try to recreate the process,
0:06:23 > 0:06:28and hopefully discover why they needed to use stale human urine!
0:06:28 > 0:06:32I've teamed up with Open University chemist James Bruce.
0:06:32 > 0:06:36Right, James. This is a natural alum crystal.
0:06:36 > 0:06:39Your challenge is to make us one of those.
0:06:39 > 0:06:44- This is a solution of aluminium sulphate, isn't it?- Yes.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48- Equivalent to the liquor they got from the shale?- Yes.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52We have to add the magic ingredient.
0:06:52 > 0:06:54- Yes!- Come round this side.
0:06:54 > 0:06:59- To you falls the honour of taking the...- Thank you very much(!)
0:06:59 > 0:07:00Right...
0:07:00 > 0:07:03How did they know urine would work?
0:07:03 > 0:07:07Because urine was used for other processes.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11They'd used it in the textile industry...on leathers.
0:07:11 > 0:07:16It wasn't that unusual to be using urine in these sorts of processes.
0:07:16 > 0:07:21It was a bottle on the shelf. They would have said, "Let's try this."
0:07:21 > 0:07:24URINE TRICKLES Yuck. You chemists are a weird lot!
0:07:24 > 0:07:29'We simmered the disgusting solution for half an hour,
0:07:29 > 0:07:33- 'until something interesting happened.'- It's working!
0:07:33 > 0:07:40- That is the alum coming out now. - That cloudy stuff...? - That white stuff is the alum.
0:07:40 > 0:07:44Boil off the remaining liquid and what remains is alum.
0:07:44 > 0:07:50- These are some of the crystals we're left with.- Like snow.- Yes.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54They're not as big as the one you showed me before,
0:07:54 > 0:07:59but size doesn't matter! That would have been grown over a long period.
0:07:59 > 0:08:05'Before we dye these pieces of cloth, one's treated with our alum solution,
0:08:05 > 0:08:10'so, hopefully, it will hold the dye better. The other is untreated.'
0:08:10 > 0:08:15It looks about done. Let's see what the result is.
0:08:15 > 0:08:17This one is much brighter.
0:08:17 > 0:08:22There's much more dye in this cloth...
0:08:22 > 0:08:25than in this cloth.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29'It becomes obvious why alum was so important to the cloth industry.
0:08:29 > 0:08:34'Bright fast colours sold for much higher prices.'
0:08:35 > 0:08:37We've made alum on a tiny scale
0:08:37 > 0:08:44but the original alum works was massive, producing 600 tons of the stuff every year
0:08:44 > 0:08:46in this cliff-top chemical factory.
0:08:46 > 0:08:51But the invention of synthetic dyes rang the death knell for alum factories.
0:08:51 > 0:08:53After 250 years,
0:08:53 > 0:09:00this ingenious industry, created by people making the most of scant resources around them, ended.
0:09:00 > 0:09:03Ravenscar finally closed in 1862.
0:09:19 > 0:09:25Historian Neil Oliver has been making the acquaintance of what the guidebooks call,
0:09:25 > 0:09:28"The queen of the Yorkshire coast."
0:09:29 > 0:09:33I remember coming on holiday to Scarborough with my mum and dad.
0:09:33 > 0:09:37Innovations in holiday-making you're after? This is the place!
0:09:37 > 0:09:41Victorian engineers transformed a remote fishing port
0:09:41 > 0:09:44into one of Europe's premier resorts.
0:09:47 > 0:09:53Scarborough has always prided itself on being able to stay on top of the tourism game.
0:09:56 > 0:10:03It had this, the world's first cliff tramway, opened in 1874, Europe's biggest hotel, The Grand,
0:10:03 > 0:10:07and, in the 19th century, the largest aquarium in the world.
0:10:07 > 0:10:09BAND PLAYS
0:10:10 > 0:10:14And it had this, the focal point of every visit to Scarborough,
0:10:14 > 0:10:19the spa, opened in 1858, and its elegant Sun Court.
0:10:19 > 0:10:24Though that's not to say the sun always shines!
0:10:27 > 0:10:34During its Victorian heyday, the spa's reputation grew as a place of entertainment and relaxation,
0:10:34 > 0:10:38and was the most popular music venue outside of London.
0:10:40 > 0:10:46Simon Kenworthy is the leader of the Spa Orchestra and something of an expert on the town's history.
0:10:46 > 0:10:49When was Scarborough's heyday?
0:10:49 > 0:10:54Well, the trains arrived in Scarborough in 1845.
0:10:54 > 0:10:59From then on, people started to come to Scarborough in their masses.
0:10:59 > 0:11:03People say that the bay here looks like the Bay of Naples.
0:11:03 > 0:11:08A lot of the architecture is to do with the lie of the land in Scarborough.
0:11:08 > 0:11:10It's quite hilly,
0:11:10 > 0:11:17so we've got these wonderful opportunities for terraces, bridges, we've got the castle on the hill.
0:11:17 > 0:11:22Was there a lot of snobbery during the heyday? "We are the best"?
0:11:22 > 0:11:26There is now. It carries on, this snobbery.
0:11:26 > 0:11:31A lot of people who come to us come specifically to Scarborough
0:11:31 > 0:11:35because it has this air of quiet gentility about it.
0:11:35 > 0:11:42It does make them feel really good about themselves because they're in this fantastic atmosphere.
0:11:42 > 0:11:47- I'm sold.- Great.- I'm going to see out my twilight years here as well!
0:11:47 > 0:11:52Despite its snobbery, Scarborough's success as a seaside resort
0:11:52 > 0:11:55was actually based on an accidental discovery.
0:11:55 > 0:12:02The whole fortune of this town is based on this little bit of water coming out here.
0:12:02 > 0:12:06People came to Scarborough after the water was discovered in 1620,
0:12:06 > 0:12:08by a local lady.
0:12:08 > 0:12:15- She discovered it had miraculous properties. This is what's left. - That's it?!- That's it.
0:12:15 > 0:12:17What's that?!
0:12:17 > 0:12:23- It's just a little brown smeary mess. - It's the magic water of Scarborough.
0:12:23 > 0:12:27It's not really safe to drink these days but you can have a go.
0:12:27 > 0:12:29Do you think not?!
0:12:29 > 0:12:36People were taking the waters into the 1950s for its medicinal properties.
0:12:36 > 0:12:38Instant dysentery, I'd have thought.
0:12:38 > 0:12:43I wouldn't fancy it myself. It looks fairly horrible.
0:12:43 > 0:12:46Where there's muck, there's brass!
0:12:46 > 0:12:53The water simply contained magnesium sulphate, as effective as Alka-Seltzer is today.
0:12:55 > 0:13:00- Did they make much use of the beach itself?- Initially, no.
0:13:00 > 0:13:02People just came for the waters.
0:13:02 > 0:13:08But Dr Wittie - in about 1660 - wrote a treatise which went around the whole of the country.
0:13:08 > 0:13:13In this treatise, he extolled the virtues of sea bathing.
0:13:13 > 0:13:19He said that a naked plunge into the salty waters followed by a sweat in a warm bed
0:13:19 > 0:13:21was a good cure for gout.
0:13:21 > 0:13:28People thought, "We can take the waters and also plunge into the sea and we'll be cured."
0:13:28 > 0:13:33'With a few aches and pains myself, I think I'll go for a paddle.'
0:13:33 > 0:13:35Oh!
0:13:35 > 0:13:36OH!
0:13:36 > 0:13:41It might look like the Bay of Naples but it doesn't feel like it!
0:13:44 > 0:13:49It may be a bit old-fashioned and trying a little too hard to impress,
0:13:49 > 0:13:51but I like Scarborough.
0:13:51 > 0:13:56What really comes across is the pride people have in their town
0:13:56 > 0:13:59and that's got to be a good thing.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13Subtitles by BBC Broadcast 2005
0:14:13 > 0:14:16E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk