BARRY LEIGHTON looks at the network of tunnels beneath Old Town

Beneath our very feet are a network of brick chambers and shafts that have delighted, miffed and excited local historians over the decades – particularly on those occasions when one is newly revealed by “stunned” workmen while renovating olde world properties.

These puzzling passageways can be found beneath and connecting some of Old Town’s – and thus Swindon’s – oldest buildings, often 19th or even 18th century structures that were built on top of older ones, deepening the mystery as to what purpose they actually served.

Speculation abounds. Why were they created in the first place, how come they appear to link up with cellars under so many other buildings and what were they used for?

The consensus is that, possibly for a couple of centuries or so, they were deployed to transport thousands of gallons of illicit booze throughout the hill-top community, both for local consumption or to be distributed further afield.

This invariably leads us to the famous Wiltshire Moonrakers legend and the notion – expounded by several historians in recent times – that it was Swindon rather than Devizes from whence this enduring slice of folklore sprang.

With delicious echoes of Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, The Moonies tale harks to the 17th and 18th centuries, when smuggling spirits into the country – thus avoiding heavy payments of duty – was big, big business, particularly in southern England.

Many made a decent living out of the racket, especially the Mr Bigs.

“Something for nothing” was the ethos. It was a dicey profession though. If you were nabbed, the chances are you swung.

Similar to modern-day drug dealing, well organised cartels – ruffians, by tradition – covertly acquired the stuff from abroad, in this case from ships primarily from France. The much prized barrels of contraband, usually brandy, were then conveyed inland for distribution.

Many secret smuggling routes snaked from the coast through the rural lanes of Wiltshire towards central England.

The Moonrakers tale, which most of us are aware of, pictures a pair of Wiltshire lads trying to retrieve barrels of booze they had stashed in a pond when they are suddenly surprised by excise men.

Pointing to the reflection of the moon, our artful oiks explain they are trying to rake in that big old round floating cheese, and are promptly dismissed as harmless hicks.

A decent claim has been made for The Crammer in Devizes as the pond in question, while nearby Bishop’s Cannings is also in with a shout.

But in his 1984 book Fishing For The Moon, local historian Peter Sheldon made a case for Swindon, reasoning that the tunnels beneath Old Town, in addition to a nearby pond, were vital cogs in a long-standing smuggling operation.

He quoted an article in the 1873 Wiltshire Archaeological Society Review saying that 70 years earlier villagers in the North Wiltshire Downs, not far from Swindon, ran a slick smuggling scam.

Central to Swindon life in the Middle Ages was a now long gone water mill adjoining a now long gone church pond, located in a hollow where Old Mill Lane today meets The Planks.

Was this, he offered, the pond in which our wily smugglers duped the predecessors of HM Customs?

Traces of the Old Town tunnels close to the pond have been found. Did Swindon’s smugglers use it to store their booty before distributing it to the cellars of local coaching inns, merchants’ houses, drinking dens and private homes through their network of tunnels? Seems plausible!

Dutch woollen merchants came to Swindon and built The Bell in the mid-18th century, over a previous drinking house called The Lapwing – ‘bell’ being an abbreviation of bellarmine, a Flemish spirit jar.

Their arrival prompted a demand for a favourite tipple, Dutch gin. The existence of the tunnels and a convenient mill pond as an initial storage point for this eagerly-sought intoxicant provided a fine opportunity for a profitable spot of smuggling, it was argued.

Built in the mid-19th century, the Town Hall/Corn Exchange boasted extensive vaults that may well have existed for years before and which, it is believed, replaced the old pond as the main storage point for contraband liquor.

The vault, which later became the cellars of wine merchants Brown and Plummer and now lays sadly derelict, is believed to be connected to other buildings via the extensive subterranean network.

It seems to me that the cellars of many Swindon properties were originally built for storage and later linked together by The Great Escape-style tunnels, for the purpose of distributing/acquiring barrel-loads of alluringly low cost alcohol.

Archaeologist Bryn Walters said: “I am a great believer that the legend of the Wiltshire Moonrakers originated in Swindon, not Devizes.

“And they were evading duty on gin, not brandy. One of the big Dutch producers is said to have had a cellar in Old Town.

“There is not a lot of evidence available to quote accurately, much is based on folklore.”

Regardless of whether the Moonies originated here or in Devizes (or indeed, ever existed at all) it seems as clear as gin that the tunnels under Old Town – bricked-up, rubble filled or collapsed – were once the arteries of a well-oiled smuggling machine, supplying liquor to Swindonians in need of a cut-price tipple or two.

I’ll drink to that!

• TUNNELS are known to exist beneath the now derelict and fire damaged Old Town Hall/Corn Exchange in The Square when it served as Brown and Plummer off-licence.
  
  Roy Cartwright, who worked for the firm from 1963 to 1968 as a driver and cellar man, said: “I once dropped a cask of wine and the flagstone broke. Underneath was another tunnel – this one heading in the direction of the Lawn.
  
  “After the last fire there I stopped a fireman and warned him to be careful down there as he might drop through to another level.” 
  
  The cellars are said to be haunted by the ghost of Stephen Lawrence, head of the Swindon Moonrakers gang who allegedly – what an irony - drowned in the pond.
  
  Then again, in such superstitious times smugglers loved to make up stories of their vaults and tunnels being haunted to keep prying eyes at bay.
  
  One brave soul is said to have delved into a Swindon cellar only to spy several apparitions sitting in a circle smoking clay pipes!
   
• A talk on the Swindon Tunnels by Jon Ratcliffe is being held by the Swindon Society at Goddard Park School in Welcombe Avenue on January 13, 2016. Admission to non-members is £3.
   
•  SEVERAL structures are known to have been connected to Swindon’s underground maze, notably in Cricklade Street, High Street, The Square, Newport Street and Marlborough Road.
  Pubs and inns whose cellars are suspected of being recipients of un-taxed spirits via the tunnels include long gone hostelries such as The King of Prussia, The White Hart, (formerly The Bull), The Plume of Feathers (later The Oddfellows) and The Mason’s Arms, as well as The Bell and The Goddards.
  
  Tunnels also connected some of Old Town’s finest homes including the former fine art gallery in Newport Street, right, wreputedly Swindon’s oldest house, with a cellar said to date to the 14th century.
   

• EIGHT years ago three spacious cellars-cum-tunnels were uncovered beneath “the finest house in Swindon” – as Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman once lauded it – sparking further speculation and excitement about Subterranean Swindon.

  The appearance of the arched vaults beneath Georgian era Villetts House in 42 Cricklade Street “shocked and amazed” workers who were transforming the Grade II listed building from solicitors’ office to apartments.

  The two largest tunnels, each about 100ft long, protruded from the 1729-built house towards the Goddard Arms.

  “We couldn’t believe what we found,” said site manager Rob Mann.
  
  The longer we are here the more we are discovering. It’s pretty incredible.”

  After another tunnel was found in North Street in 2007 historian Jean Allen told us: “There are tunnels all over the place in Old Town. They likely stem from the old smuggling days when gin was smuggled from Holland.

  “There isn’t much written down about it, as it is all legend. But the legends are still going strong and the tunnels are being discovered.”