For many poor inhabitants struggling to stay alive there is no doubt smuggling was a way of life on the 18th and early 19th Centuries.

The most famous incident took place in February 1832 when a smuggler was shot dead.

The Sussex Weekly Advertiser recalled how "At three o'clock in the morning, in broad moonlight, a boat taking about 300 tubs of spirits was beached opposite Stafford's Library (now the Stagecoach ticket office) and a party of about 200 men carried tubs along the Steyne and up High Street."

They were guarded by a party of Bexhill batsmen, mostly armed with fearsome staves, hence their name, but also a few firearms. The smugglers were intercepted by a small force of lawmen under the command of a Lieutenant Henderson and followed into open countryside, where High Street joins with North Street.

Moments later, the smugglers were held up by a narrow footbridge over the Teville Stream, at a point in what is now Upper High Street. Here, a violent and ultimately fatal skirmish unfolded.

The Advertiser stated: "The smugglers, with a man of the name of Cowerson as their leader, formed a line and came with many oaths upon Lt Henderson, who, maintaining the greatest coolness, warned them not to come any closer, and threatened to shoot the first person that advanced, but still they closed on him."

William Cowerson, a stonemason from Steyning who was working on the repair of Tarring Church, went to strike Lt Henderson, who shot him dead with a pistol.

Another smuggler was wounded in the thigh.

Cowerson was buried in Steyning Churchyard, where his grave can still be seen, and for several years afterwards a troop of Dragoons was stationed in the town to maintain order.

The first reference to smuggling was logged in the 1390s, giving 21st Century scholars a tantalising but ultimately frustrating glimpse of Worthing's largely uncharted medieval past.

We were told that a number of men - Robert Smith, Henry Elay, William Kitte, John Mitchelgrove, William Hobbin and John Mot - were caught trying to smuggle wool out of the country.

They were fined eight marks after being spotted hiding with their horses and the contraband in bushes.

We then jump to July 1720, when 200 men armed with guns, pistols, clubs, swords and blunderbusses assembled on the beach at Goring.

At the time Goring was renowned for its huge flocks of fine sheep and wool was shipped out in return for tubs of brandy.

Worthing, with no cliffs to impede progress, was regarded as a good landing place, and Sea Place, Goring, was at the heart of regular smuggling runs.

In 1744, a Dragoon by the name of Michael Bath was mortally wounded during a landing near Sea Place, which has a road leading from it called Smuggler's Walk.

Much has been written about John Olliver, the eccentric Miller of Highdown, whose tomb can still be seen on Highdown Hill, on a superb vantage point overlooking the town.

Folklore has overshadowed fact a bit but it is said he was involved with smuggling.

In Tarring, it is said rectangular tombs covered by slabs of stone in St Andrew's churchyard were used to hide the spoils.

At about 10pm on March 25, 1827, customs men, who lived with their families in a long-demolished street called King's Row, encountered a gang of smugglers near Tarring Road.

About 30 armed men and 200 others, many with bludgeons four or five feet long, were gathering for a landing of contraband.

There were exchanges of fire and up to 40 smugglers took refuge in the George and Dragon Inn, High Street, Tarring, where they were surrounded.

Lieutenant Henry Leworthy rode to the residence of the only available magistrate to obtain a search warrant but he was not at home and the smugglers were allowed to go home.

They were lucky, because elsewhere in the country smugglers were hung from gibbets in prominent locations as a warning to others.