[Picture: Smuggler’s tracks near Ewhurst]
An old brick-and-tile-hung farm, down below Ewhurst Hill, older than it looks, known as Barhatch, was in those times in possession of the Ticknor family; and still, in what was the old living-room, may be seen the inglenook, with its iron crane, marked “John Ticknor, 1755.” The Barhatch woods were often used by smugglers, and the Ticknors never had any occasion to purchase spirits, because, at not infrequent intervals, when the household arose, and the front door was opened in the morning, a keg would be found deposited on the steps: a complimentary keg, for the use of the Ticknor property and the discretion of the Ticknor tongue.
One of the choicest landing-places along the Sussex coast must undoubtedly have been just westward of Worthing, by Goring, where the shore is yet secluded, and is even now not readily come at by good roads. In a line with it is Highdown Hill, a rounded hump of the Downs, rising to a height of two hundred and ninety-nine feet, two miles inland; a spot famed in all guidebook lore of this neighbourhood as the site of the “Miller’s Tomb.” This miller, whose real business of grinding corn seems to have been supplemented by participation in the stern joys of illegal importation, was one John Olliver. His mill was situated on this hill-top: a very remote spot, even now, arrived at only along lanes in which mud and water plentifully await the explorer’s cautious foot, and where brambles and intrudant twigs, currycomb his whiskers, if he have such.
John Olliver, miller, was an eighteenth-century eccentric, whose morbid fancy for having his coffin made early in life, and wheeled under his bed every night, was not satisfied until he had also built himself a tomb on the hill-top, on a twelve-foot square plot of ground granted him by the landowner, one W. W. Richardson, in 1766: a tomb on which he could with satisfaction look every day. Yet he was not the dull, dispirited man one might for these things suppose; and Pennant, in his _Tour in Sussex_, is found saying, “I am told he is a stout, active, cheerful man.” And then comes this significant passage. “Besides his proper trade he carries on a very considerable one in smuggled goods.” Let us pause a moment to reflect upon the impudent public manner in which John Olliver must have carried on his smuggling activities. To this impudence he added also figures on his house-top, representing a miller filling a sack and a smuggler chased by an exciseman with a drawn sword; after the exciseman coming a woman with a broom, belabouring him about the head. The tomb the miller had built for eventual occupation by his body was in the meanwhile generally occupied by spirits—not the spirits of the dead, but such _eaux de vie_ as hollands and cognac; and he himself was not laid here for many years, for he lived to be eighty-four years of age, and died in 1793. He had long been widely known as an eccentric, and thousands came to his funeral on the unconsecrated spot. Here the tomb, of the altar-tomb type, stands to this day, kept in excellent repair, and the lengthy inscriptions repainted; at whose costs and charges I know not. A small grove of trees almost entirely encircles it. At one end is a gruesome little sculpture representing Death, as a skeleton, laying a hand upon an affrighted person, and asking him, “Whither away so fast?” and at the other end are the following lines: