How the real smugglers of the Ray inspired my novel ‘The Riptide’

The Ray is real.

It is a small, low-lying islet in the Blackwater Estuary, just off Mersea Island in Essex, surrounded by salt marsh, mudflats and tidal channels. Today it is a quiet, remote place, but Ray and the surrounding country have a remarkably dark past.

This was smuggling country.

The geography explains much of it. The Essex coast is a maze of creeks, marshes, islands and channels, and the landscape changes dramatically with the tide. The Ray itself can feel almost detached from the mainland. To someone who knew the waterways, it offered innumerable opportunities to land a cargo, conceal it and move it inland. To a Revenue officer arriving from elsewhere, it must have been bewildering.

From the sixteenth century through into the nineteenth, Mersea and the surrounding villages became associated with the smuggling of tea, tobacco, spirits and other heavily taxed goods. The trade was sufficiently profitable to become part of the local economy. Fishermen, farmers, publicans and others could all benefit from contraband arriving through the creeks.

And there were some ingenious places to hide it.

One of my favourite stories concerns the Peldon Rose, the ancient inn just across the Strood from Mersea Island. The pond beside the inn was supposedly used as a hiding place for smuggled goods. According to the local tradition, barrels of spirits could be weighted down and lowered into the pond on ropes while the excise men searched the premises. There was said to be a concealed shaft or false bottom beneath the water, allowing the barrels to be hidden from anyone examining the pond. 

I first visited the Peldon Rose during lockdown – which made things tricky because it was all shut up and abandoned, a ghost of an inn. But, perhaps, that fitted with the themes of my novel, which is about how the hungry ghosts of the past can devour the present. Set in France during the French Revolution and Britain 20 years later, the currents of time are forever dragging people under.

The Peldon Rose wasn't an isolated case. Local accounts describe inns and houses throughout the area being used to store illicit goods. The people involved weren't necessarily hardened criminals. Smuggling could involve an entire network of otherwise respectable local people: someone who knew when a boat was coming in, someone who provided a cart, someone who hid a barrel in a cellar, someone who sold the goods on.

But the trade could also be brutally violent.

There is a notorious local story about a group of excise men who came to the Mersea area in search of smugglers. The smugglers, according to the story, deliberately allowed word to spread that a large landing of contraband was about to take place. The Revenue men took the bait. They gathered together and went out in a longboat, expecting to catch the smugglers in the act.

Instead, they were ambushed.

The traditional account says that the smugglers attacked the boat and murdered the excise men, cutting their throats and leaving their bodies. One version says that as many as twenty-four men were killed. The bodies were subsequently said to have been buried beneath an upturned boat in the churchyard at Virley.

Whether every detail has been embroidered by generations of retelling is less interesting than the fact that the story survived at all. It tells you something about the reputation the smugglers acquired – and about how dangerous the battle between the Revenue men and the smugglers could become.

The more I discovered, the more I realised that the landscape around the Ray was almost a ready-made thriller.

And I wasn't the first writer to notice.

Sabine Baring-Gould was rector of East Mersea from 1871 to 1881. He is probably best known today as the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers, but he was an extraordinary polymath: clergyman, folklorist, antiquarian and novelist. During his decade on Mersea he became fascinated by the stories and traditions of the place. His great fictional response was ‘Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes’, published in 1880.

Like my novel, his is a dark, Gothic tale of violence, passion, revenge and smuggling, set around the real landscape of Mersea and the Ray during the period of the Napoleonic Wars. Baring-Gould knew the country intimately and used real places and local traditions in the book.

And then there was Margery Allingham.

Long before she became famous for Albert Campion, Allingham was fascinated by Mersea. Her first novel, ‘Blackkerchief Dick’, was published in 1923, when she was only nineteen, and is a historical adventure involving the smugglers of Mersea Island.

I loved discovering this literary succession. The smugglers create the stories; local people preserve them; Baring-Gould, the rector, turns them into Gothic fiction; Allingham turns them into an early crime novel; and eventually I came along and found that the landscape still contained the ingredients I needed.

I wasn't looking for a fictional landscape and then trying to make it seem real. I had the opposite problem. Reality had already done most of the work.

The Riptide by Gareth Rubin is published by Simon & Schuster (Out Now)

A dazzling, puzzle-box mystery of secrets, power and hidden truths. 1804, Isle of Ray, Essex. Lysander Rose has spent his life searching for the truth about his mother, abducted when he was just a baby. When the men who took her return for him, Lysander is forced to flee – leaving behind everything he knows. But in his escape, he uncovers a clue that draws him into the orbit of a secretive organisation known only as the Circle. As Lysander follows the trail from the Essex coast to the shadowed streets of Edinburgh, he finds himself entangled in a world of murder, blackmail and political intrigue. At its centre: an exiled king, and a conspiracy that could shape the fate of nations. And stranger still, the secrets of Lysander’s own past seem to be hidden in the pages of a lurid penny-blood chapbook – a story that may hold the key to who he really is. But as the truth of his origins begins to emerge, Lysander must decide whether he can escape the fate others have written for him.

More information about the author can be found on his website. He can also be found on Facebook and on X@GarethRubin

 

The Essex Murder Triangle by James Henry

In 1990 I started working in Tiptree, a village between Colchester and Maldon in Essex. At the time I was living in Billericay, a commuter town twenty-five miles away to the west. The nearest big towns were Basildon and Chelmsford. Up until this point, I had always worked in London and while Tiptree was pleasant enough, it was a place noted for its superb jam, not its thrilling nightlife. I was twenty years old at the time and I found it hard to adjust to a slower pace of life. I’d never been to Colchester, let alone any of its outlying villages, and more often than not the local gossip and references were lost on me. One thing that came up time and again was the curious sounding, ‘Essex Triangle’, and the nearby small town of Coggeshall, in the heart of the triangle.

Legend had it that a disproportionate number of murders had been committed within this ‘triangle’, relative to the size of the population who lived there. The other thing I often heard about Coggeshall was that it was built on ley lines, and that all manner of weird happenings and hauntings occurred there. This all seemed suspicious and I paid no attention; I was not remotely interested in countryside myths. 

Within two years I opted to return to London.

Decades later, when I started writing crime novels, these hazy memories returned to me. By then I had moved to that very part of Essex that I had not taken to as a younger man; moreover, I knew it well and I decided I wanted to write about this familiar and often underrated landscape. In Blackwater, the first book in my new series, I had established my lead character DS Lowry in Colchester. For the second book, Yellowhammer, I would take him into the countryside, to Coggeshall and Kelvedon. 

Alas I never came across the infamous ley lines in Coggeshall, but shortly after Yellowhammer was published, I discovered a book called The Essex Triangle by Simon Thurlow, (with the subtitle Four decades of violence and mayhem in a sleepy pocket of rural England). On the cover is a photograph of the convicted murderer Jeremy Bamber, whose victims were discovered in 1985 at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, less than four miles from Tiptree. Inside the cover is a map of the ‘Essex Triangle’ itself: and, smack in the middle, is Coggeshall my current hometown. The triangle has become a circle; these myths and stories that were of so little interest to my 20-year-old self in the end became the very things that fuelled my imagination and inspire me to continue writing. 

Whitethroat by James Henry is published by Riverrun on 8^th July, £14.99

It's November 1983 in Essex and there are reasons to be cheerful. Uptown Girl is sitting pretty at the top of the charts, Risky Business is raking it in at the box office, and there are now four channels on the telly. However, social tensions are beginning to bubble beneath the surface: Mrs Thatcher has embarked on her second controversial term, and the situation in Northern Ireland is ever-escalating.
Yet in the garrison town of Colchester, it's another deadly standoff that is hogging the headlines. The body of a nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal has been discovered on the local High Street, the result of what appears to be a bizarre, chivalrous duel. It seems he was the victim of a doomed army love triangle. As such, the military police are wishing to keep the matter confined within military ranks.
This is all just fine, as far as Colchester CID is concerned. They have enough on their plate as is: with DI Nick Lowry in a tailspin following the breakdown of his marriage, WPC Jane Gabriel exasperated by the male-favoured system, Detective Daniel Kenton relying on substance abuse to quieten his demons from his last case; and their boss, DCS Sparks, shortly to become a first-time father at 55.
However, it is not long before the blood from the duel runs into civilian police affairs, and the trail presents CID with a local rogues' gallery. A savvy entrepreneur. A wayward skinhead. A member of the landed gentry. And a shadowy Mauritian travel agent with a chilling reputation. Soon, they will discover, a real estate deal, a racist, and the town's Robin Hood pub hold the key to the killing...

Syd Moore - Keeping it Real - Why I Write About Real Events

The historical mystery in my latest book, Strange Fascination, had been fluttering on the edges of my imagination, attracting my glances periodically, since I was first alerted to it by a friend. He’s a photographer and seven years ago was commissioned to document a cute little Essex pub. When he had arrived he noticed a lump of rock situated rather strangely at the entrance to the carpark. It was in such an odd position that when he finished his work he commented on it to the owner. To his surprise the landlord informed him that, yes it was a pain but unfortunately it couldn’t be moved. When asked why, my friend was told rather casually, it was the ‘Witches Stone’ and had been there for centuries to stop the witch underneath rising from her grave. That’s right – this was just seven years ago. As you can imagine, my curiosity was well and truly piqued and, when I had cleared my desk of other tales, I began to research.  As my studies got underway I uncovered a true story of murder, mayhem and magic.  Gradually I peeled back layers of legend and lore to 1621 where I learned of the sad tale of Anne Hewghes. She, like the majority of accused witches in Essex, was a poor woman and a widow who lived in the village of Great Leighs. In 1621 she was accused of ‘bewitching to death’ a pied cow, the ‘goods and chattels’ of Richard Edwardes and murdering John Archer through sorcery. Her neighbours threw in a couple of other grumbles for good measure, so that over time Anne’s story became a legend that told of a powerful and evil old witch who brazenly slayed a fine upright citizen and who was consequently burnt at the stake on the crossroads of Scrapfaggot Green. Not only that, the villagers decided once her body had been obliterated her ashes should be buried under the site of her execution and a great boulder moved over the top to ensure she could not take revenge. Hence the reason why the carpark rock could never be moved.

It was a fascinating story, which took a further twist when I discovered that it had been the source of much concern to none other than the US military as late as 1944. Commandeering the pub for their use during the Second World War, the army found that they could not get their military vehicles into the carpark: they were big and the entrance was small. In their way, you see, was a large stone boulder with a ridiculous local legend attached to it. Having no truck with the concerns raised by the locals they commissioned a bulldozer to remove it. The desecration however soon began to wreak havoc: church bells rang of their own accord; livestock keeled over and died; geese disappeared, and a dark and lonely phantom was seen walking the village at night.

And, it wouldn’t stop.

The haunting became so notorious that it was featured in several national newspapers, alongside news about the war. The publicity, however, did nothing to halt the slew of strange phenomena engulfing the village. In their desperation the military called in well-known ghost hunter, Harry Price, of Borley Rectory fame. His conclusions were utterly compelling, and I could not resist exploring them in Strange Fascination. So in my latest book, I’ve located the boulder in the carpark of a pub in Adder’s Fork, home to the Witch Museum. Instead of the military driving into town the story, set today, sees greedy developers arrive in the village. They intend to build a brace of new executive homes, but guess what? There’s a large boulder in their way. Obviously, they decide to move it – I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

The history that lies under every inch of our country, its real people and real crimes, also keep me focussed on structure, especially beginnings and ends. But more than that this aspect enables me to reclaim the stories of some of those lonely unheard voices, the owners of which have long since slipped through the fingers of history. One thing that’s for certain is that Essex, with the highest number of indictments for witchcraft than any other English county, will be keeping the Witch Museum stocked with stories for many years to come.   

STRANGE FASCINATION by Syd Moore is out now from Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld, paperback £8.99.

 It's summer in Adders Fork. The sun is out, the sky is blue and things are going swimmingly for Rosie Strange, thank you very much. The Essex Witch Museum has been relaunched with a new Ursula Cadence wing and picnic grounds.  Then developers roll into the sleepy village to widen the road. When the centuries-old Blackly Be boulder, said to mark the grave of a notorious witch but now in the car park of the Seven Stars, is moved, all hell breaks out. Within hours a slew of peculiar phenomena descends and, when a severed head is discovered atop the boulder, the locals can take no more and storm the Museum to demand someone take action.  Can Rosie and Sam unravel the mystery? And what of the ancient treasure that could drastically change someone's fortunes and offer a motive for murder?

The Only Way is Essex

Today’s guest blog is by debut author Susan Wilkins.  After a degree in law and a stint as a journalist she embarked on a career in television drama.  She has written scripts for a number of well known television dramas such as Heartbeat, Casualty, Eastenders and Coronation Street. She also wrote and created the London based detective drams South of the Border of which two series was made by the BBC.  The Informant is her first novel.  The sequel The Mourner is due out in 2015.

I’m an Essex girl born and bred, proud of my origins but more than a little hacked off with the clichés.  White sling backs, fake tan, stupidity and that abrasive ‘Estuary English’, screaming-harpy dialect – Essex has become a stereotype.  And television shows like ‘The Only Way is Essex’, made by Lime Pictures – who make Hollyoaks and are incidentally based in Liverpool – don’t help.

Trashy and Essex have become synonymous.  And typecast Essex villains are part of that image.

However, there is the opposite side of the coin.  If you work in the City or Canary Wharf making a telephone number salary in banking and you want to live within a short commute of your desk in glorious countryside, where do you choose?  The only way is definitely Essex.

Since the deregulation of the financial markets, or Big Bang as it’s known, in 1986, Essex has become home to swathes of seriously rich individuals as well as a class of affluent commuters who work ‘up in town’ to use the local parlance.

As a result the divide between the haves and the have not’s is probably more pronounced in Essex than in any other part of the country, with the exception of London.  The county is a microcosm of what modern Britain is fast becoming.  And this is one reason why it’s such an interesting setting to write about.

I was born in Southend-on-Sea, the blowsy Cockney playground of the immediate pre and post-war years.  Southend has faded from fashion.  But it set up a relationship between London and Essex, which endures.  Escaping the slums of the East End to the green fields of Essex began in the 30’s.  It continued in the 60’s to ‘new towns’ like Harlow and Basildon.

The main character in The Informant is Kaz Phelps.  Her father is a small time London gangster, who realises that robbing banks or ‘pavement work’ is a thing of the past and sees a future for himself and his family in Essex.

In the 90’s the Essex club scene was awash with drugs like Ecstasy and kids with money determined to party.  For drug dealers, like my fictional character Terry Phelps, it was a bonanza.

Kaz Phelps grows up in Basildon and then, as family fortunes improve, the prosperous villages north of the A127 around Billericay.

This was also my childhood home and I saw it morph from small and sleepy commuter town to an enclave oozing serious money.

As a writer one of the things that has fascinated me is the impact of social inequality.  If you live cheek by jowl with wealth but you’re not sharing it, how do you feel?  Are your neighbours so much more worthy than you because they’re on the gravy train and you’re not?

Crime born of poverty has long been a staple of crime fiction.  But it seems to me that crime born of envy reflects our consumer, celebrity-obsessed society far more accurately.  If you can’t win the X Factor or make it as a footballer must you settle for less?  Why be a shelf stacker or a call centre drone, when you can deal drugs and be rich too?  And if you need a justification consult the nearest billboard: Because you’re worth it.  Why should they have it all and not you?

You can follow Susan Wilkins on Twitter - @SusanWilkins32 and you can also find her on Facebook.

The Informant by Susan Wilkins is out now £7.99 (Pan Macmillan)