SOME two months ago, my wife and I enjoyed a short visit to Saltburn, where we enjoyed its open sandy beach with the pier then displaying the famous and mysteriously knitted lengthy scarf with its Olympic symbols. This long scarf, knitted anonymously, rapidly became a tourist attraction as it adorned the pier rails.

There are also Saltburn’s renowned gardens with their miniature railway, plus the atmosphere of the sea-front where some of the tastiest fish and chips can be enjoyed with open sea views. Saltburn’s previously rather grubby appearance has now gone and the little seaside town has been transformed into a clean and attractive resort with modest but pleasing attractions.

Many years ago, when I was a lad, I would cycle to Saltburn, which then boasted a railway viaduct and a thriving coastal line to Whitby. Much of this line is now disused and dismantled, part of it serving as the Cleveland Way long distance footpath. There is still a passenger line from Middlesbrough into Saltburn’s handsome but unstaffed railway station, as well as a single track via Skelton and Brotton to serve Skinningrove ironworks and Boulby potash mine.

It was the arrival of the railway that transformed Saltburn from a tiny collection of cottages that were almost on the shoreline and made it into a highly attractive and wealthy cliff-top town with splendid hotels, boarding establishments, private houses, churches and fashionable shops. There was also a valuable railway link connecting the new town with other centres from its magnificent and ornate station which was not officially opened until 1862.

However, the line was opened earlier in 1861 by the Stockton & Darlington Railway as the terminus of the line from Redcar and very rapidly it became the focus of tourist excursions from as far away as Leeds and Blackpool, and there was even a passenger platform adjoining the fashionable Zetland Hotel. First-class travellers could disembark directly into their accommodation at the hotel – in fact, the hotel was owned by the railway company.

Another treat for visitors was the ingenious funicular railway that carried them up and down the cliff to and from the then Alexandra Hotel (now flats) and down to the pier that was opened in 1869, then restored in 2001. This is the oldest operational funicular railway in Britain and it functions with the help of counterbalancing water tanks.

There is no doubt that in Victorian times, Saltburn became a highly fashionable holiday resort that was patronised by wealthy people from a wide area, and yet it boasted very little recorded history relating to its earlier existence. There are suggestions that a Roman signalling station was installed on Hunt Cliff, the towering heights that stand just to the east of the beach above Saltburn Scar and dominate the area known as Old Saltburn.

Previous discoveries of ancient burial urns and mounds suggest that there was a settlement on the top of Hunt Cliff while its name, Saltburn, appears to derive from Sealt-Burna, a Saxon name meaning salty stream.

By the 12th Century, this name had become Salteburnam and the saltiness may be associated with alum that was found nearby. These names referred to the stream now known as Skelton Beck, which flows through the gardens and into the sea near Old Saltburn.

While Saltburn’s modern history is associated with the Victorian development on the cliff top, much of its earlier renown came from Old Saltburn.

This was, and still is, a collection of cottages that are almost on the shoreline and in danger from very high seas, but still dominated by the presence of the historic Ship Inn. Its name is often linked with other coastal inns, for example the Three Mariners at Scarborough, the Ship Launch Inn at Whitby, the Mulgrave Castle Inn near Sandsend and the Old Ship at Filey, along with others at Robin Hood’s Bay and Staithes.

To those coastal inns, we can add the famous Saltersgate Inn on the moorland road between Whitby and Pickering, which has now been closed for several months, because their common link is part of our coastal history – smuggling.

In the 18th and 19th Centuries, smuggling was a highly popular pastime which some regarded as nothing more than a battle of wits with Customs and Excise officers, known as revenue men. Probably because smuggling did not attract the death sentence, few regarded it as a crime. Indeed, some of its top exponents were vicars, estate owners and wealthy men who regarded the avoidance of tax as something of a healthy challenge, although it must be said that extreme violence was something used by gangs of smugglers.

Many of them were very knowledgeable about the laws governing goods washed ashore from shipwrecks or even swept overboard to be cast on shore by the tides. They could evade penalties by claiming the contraband was from such sources. Practically the only sure means of prosecuting a smuggler was to catch him in the act.

Smuggling was not conducted merely from coastal areas, however. Trains of pack horses would cross the moors carrying various types of taxable merchandise, ranging from salt to barrels of brandy or gin. Even sheep and wool were smuggled out of the country by men known as owlers while those who smuggled goods into the country were called hoverers.

One of the most successful of local coastal smugglers was the landlord of the Ship Inn at Old Saltburn. It still exists and we had a fine lunch there. His name was John Andrews, a Scotsman who became landlord in 1781. His activities led to stories about a secret tunnel linking the inn to a house on the cliff top, through which the contraband could be moved at high speed.

Andrews was a clever and successful man. He became Master of the Cleveland Hunt in 1817 to provide him with an aura of respectability, and it also enabled him to carry out his smuggling operations with help from an extensive range of very influential people. His operations from the Ship Inn were so successful that the excise men never caught him in possession of incriminating evidence.

When a ship arrived off shore with a suitable cargo, the password was “Andrews’ cow has calved” and this signalled a speedy session of unloading, followed by a swift concealment of the goods. But despite all his success, Andrews could not evade the authorities for ever. He was caught in 1827 after 46 years of high-grade smuggling and was fined a colossal amount of £100,000. At that time, it was a massive sum and he could not pay, so he was sent to prison at York Castle for two years. I have no record of what happened to him when he was released.

And finally, smugglers were known as gentlemen and Rudyard Kipling recorded their work in the Smugglers’ Song, as per the following verses: If you wake at midnight and hear a horse’s feet Don’t go drawing back the blinds or looking in the street, Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie.

Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.

Five and twenty ponies trotting through the dark – Brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk; Laces for a lady, letters for a spy And watch the wall, my darling, as the gentlemen go by.