312 



OLD WEST SURREY 



also that his father used to tell her how, when a man 

 riding looked very stout, he could make a pretty good 

 guess that he had yards and yards of smuggled silk wound 

 round him. 



Another remembered how kegs of brandy were often 

 hid inside an altar-tomb in Cranleigh Churchyard. One 

 nij-ht some men concealed themselves in the church porch 



to watch for and catch the smugglers, 

 but when the smugglers came, their 

 courage evaporated, and not a man 

 dared stir. 



Many squires and yeomen were 

 friendly with the 

 smugglers, and it 

 was known that 

 kegs of brandy were 

 often left on the 

 doorstep at Barhatch 

 in the time of the 

 last of the Ticknor 

 family, whose ances- 

 tors built the house 

 in the reign of Queen 

 Elizabeth. Here 

 there is also a dog- 

 gate at the stair-foot; another, a few miles away, is shown 

 at p. 34. 



Black Bryony 



An old shepherd who worked on the chalk downs a 

 few miles to the north, who was eighty-two years of age 

 in 1889, told how smugglers used to bring their pack-loads 

 of brandy up Combe Bottom and hide them among the 

 •thickets of juniper, thorn, and bramble. 



