SMUGGLING AT BOULMER
The coast becomes increasingly rocky to the north of Alnmouth, near the village of Boulmer, which was once the smuggling `capital' of Northumberland. Contrabanders came from all over Northumberland and the Scottish borders to Boulmer, to deal in illicit goods during the smuggling heyday of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The smuggling fraternity included Isaac `the Smuggler' Addison, landlord of Boulmer's Fishing Boat Inn and the Scottish smugglers Wull Faa, the gypsy king of Kirk Yetholm and Wull Balmer of Jedburgh;
" Blind Wull Bawmer o' Jethart His grips are no guid to come in;
He felled all the gaugers i' Jethart When comin' frae Boomer wi' gin."
Many of the smugglers would make their way to Boulmer, from the wilds of Coquetdale and other border valleys, where numerous camoflagued distilleries were hidden in the hillsides out of the sight of the excisemen. Smuggling was a highly profitable business and many of the participants, became local folk heroes, but it should be remembered that the activity could be of a highly dangerous nature. Those caught in the act would almost certainly face a sentence of death.William Weaver Tomlinson's Guide to Northumberland of 1888 claims that smuggled goods such as silks and casks of spirit were still occasionally dug up on the coast at Boulmer in the late nineteenth century. Today Boulmer is best known as the site of an RAF station.
this is taken from the Northumberland Coast History website.
Toni
one of my relations was a smuggler too!