Some of those stories may contain fragments of truth. Others have grown considerably in the telling.

What is beyond doubt is that Worthing was once a significant centre for smuggling. Violent confrontations took place on its beach and in its streets, ordinary residents helped move and hide contraband, and the authorities eventually stationed soldiers in the town to bring the trade under control. Worthing Museum describes the area as a centre for smuggling during the 18th and 19th centuries, where more than one skirmish was fought against Excise officers.

However, the romantic idea of one vast, organised tunnel network stretching beneath central Worthing is much harder to prove.

The night hundreds of smugglers took over Worthing

The clearest window into Worthing’s smuggling world comes from the early hours of 22 February 1832.

At around two or three in the morning, a boat came ashore opposite Stafford’s Library, close to what is now the southern end of the Steyne. It carried approximately 300 tubs of contraband spirits, including Dutch gin and French brandy, as well as perfume.

Around 200 men were involved in unloading and protecting the cargo. Some were smugglers, others were local helpers, while a group of armed “batsmen” carried heavy wooden staves and some firearms to deter the authorities.

This was not a handful of shadowy figures disappearing through a concealed tunnel. It was effectively a small army operating in the middle of Worthing.

Customs officers raised the alarm and mounted Preventative officers converged on the town. The smugglers began moving the tubs inland, heading from the beach towards the High Street and then towards Broadwater, Tarring, Sompting and the Downs.

What followed was a running battle through Worthing.

The smugglers knew the town far better than their pursuers. They used narrow twittens, courtyards, back entrances and passages between buildings. Residents in Warwick Street reportedly opened their front doors, allowed smugglers carrying contraband to enter, and then let them escape through the rear of the property into another street.

This is important when discussing the tunnels. Contemporary descriptions of “passages” do not necessarily mean subterranean routes. Worthing’s cramped streets, interconnected yards, cellars and narrow alleys already formed an effective escape network above and immediately below ground.

The smugglers were eventually slowed at a gated footbridge over the Teville Stream. There, 31-year-old stonemason William Cowerson, one of the gang’s leaders, confronted Lieutenant Henderson of the Preventative Force.

Cowerson struck the officer with such force that Henderson’s arm was reportedly broken. Henderson then raised a pistol with his other hand and shot Cowerson at close range. Cowerson died, while several others on both sides were injured.

An inquest was held at the nearby Anchor Inn, now the Corner House, and the killing was judged justified. The landlord was paid £1 for hosting the proceedings.

Cowerson was far from universally regarded as a criminal. Around 1,000 people are said to have attended his funeral in Steyning, where his grave survives. To many local people, smugglers were resisting excessive taxation rather than committing a serious moral wrong.

Why Worthing became ideal smuggling territory

Worthing’s position made it particularly attractive to smuggling gangs.

It offered a long, accessible coastline facing continental Europe, with open beaches where boats could be run ashore. Behind the beach were fishing families, labourers, farmers, tradesmen, innkeepers and horse owners who could move cargo quickly inland.

During daylight hours, many participants lived ordinary lives as fishermen, craftsmen, businessmen or agricultural workers. At night, smuggling provided additional income during periods when legitimate work was poorly paid or scarce. The depression that followed the Napoleonic Wars, combined with heavy customs duties on imported goods, helped revive smuggling during the 1820s.

The operation extended far beyond the shoreline. Horses were supplied by nearby farms. Lookouts watched from elevated positions. Inns and private houses provided meeting places and storage. Cellars, outbuildings and even churchyard tombs were reputedly used to conceal goods.

Steyning Museum records that smugglers relied on an entire community infrastructure: horses, houses with cellars, inns, shepherds acting as lookouts and chamber tombs in or near churches.

Cowerson himself was working on the tower of St Andrew’s Church in West Tarring shortly before his death. Local tradition holds that table tombs in its churchyard were used to store alcohol and other contraband.

The important point is that smugglers did not require a vast tunnel network. Worthing itself—its beach, lanes, doors, cellars, twittens and surrounding villages—was the network.

The legendary tunnel from the George Inn

The most persistent central-Worthing tunnel story concerns the George Inn.

The inn once stood near the junction of Chapel Road, South Street and Warwick Street. It served an important civic function before Worthing had a purpose-built town hall and occupied a central position between the beach and the routes leading inland.

According to local tradition, a tunnel ran from the George Inn towards the sea. Even the official Time for Worthing history describes it cautiously: the inn “was said to have” a smugglers’ tunnel down to the beach. That wording matters. It records a longstanding tradition, not a verified archaeological discovery.

There are several reasons why the story remains believable to many residents. The inn stood in precisely the kind of location smugglers would have valued. It would almost certainly have possessed storage areas and cellars. It was close to the centre of documented smuggling activity, including the route taken during the battle of 1832.

But no publicly available archaeological plan has established a continuous passage running from the George Inn to the shoreline.

The building was demolished in 1969 during the clearance that preceded construction of the Guildbourne Centre, which opened in 1974.

If short passages, enlarged drains, connected cellars or sealed chambers existed beneath the site, redevelopment may have cut through, filled or removed them. That is a reasonable possibility, but it should not be presented as proof that the legendary sea tunnel existed.

The demolition also deprived the town of the opportunity to investigate the building with the archaeological standards that would normally accompany a sensitive historic site today.

The mysterious discovery beneath Tarring

Tarring has its own underground mystery.

A local historical account reports that in 1885, a workman made a significant underground discovery in Tarring. The feature has subsequently been described as a passage, chamber or tunnel, but its original purpose remains unresolved.

Tarring was deeply connected to the smuggling economy. It lay on routes leading inland from Worthing beach and provided barns, houses, church property and agricultural land where goods could be dispersed. Cowerson was working at Tarring church, and contraband from the 1832 landing was believed to have been hidden across Tarring, Broadwater, Sompting, Lancing and Steyning.

That makes a smuggling interpretation tempting.

Yet underground structures can have many explanations. They may be old drains, wells, storage vaults, cellars, ice houses, culverts, abandoned building foundations or short service passages. Without a recorded excavation, measurements, construction dates or associated artefacts, calling the 1885 discovery a smuggling tunnel would be speculation.

It remains evidence that unusual subterranean structures existed around old Worthing and Tarring—but not definitive evidence of an organised underground transport system.

Could a tunnel really have reached the sea?

A short passage between neighbouring buildings or from an inn cellar into a concealed yard is entirely plausible.

A long tunnel from Chapel Road or an inland pub directly to the beach would have presented much greater difficulties.

Central Worthing has a long history of tidal, surface-water and groundwater problems. Modern flood assessments still identify substantial areas of the town centre within tidal flood zones, including South Street, Marine Parade and Montague Street. The wider coastal plain is also influenced by groundwater moving through the chalk geology beneath West Sussex.

This does not make an old tunnel impossible. It does mean that a lengthy, dry, stable and reusable passage near sea level would have required considerable construction and maintenance.

It is more likely that at least some “tunnel” stories originated from shorter structures:

  • linked or extended cellars;
  • vaulted drains and culverts;
  • covered passages between properties;
  • storage chambers;
  • wells with side openings;
  • later air-raid shelters mistakenly associated with smugglers.

Worthing genuinely does possess later underground structures. An air-raid shelter was installed beneath Steyne Gardens during the Second World War, while tunnels in a High Salvington chalk pit were used to protect museum and Town Hall collections from bombing.

Over several generations, memories of different underground places can easily merge into one larger legend.

How smuggling influenced Worthing’s development

The tunnels themselves cannot presently be shown to have dictated Worthing’s street plan or later development. The broader smuggling trade, however, had a real impact.

It supported the local economy

Smuggling provided additional income for families living through unstable employment and low wages. It also supplied cheaper alcohol, tobacco, tea, perfume and other imported goods to local consumers, including wealthier residents who were willing to overlook how those goods arrived.

Money generated by the trade would have circulated through inns, farms, horse owners, fishermen, craftsmen and shops. It was an underground economy in the financial sense, even where no physical tunnel was involved.

It strengthened Worthing’s hidden routes

Smugglers exploited the older town rather than creating it. Twittens, rear entrances, enclosed yards, coastal tracks and north–south routes towards Broadwater became valuable because they allowed cargo to be split up and pursuers to be evaded.

The 1832 battle demonstrates that doors and alleys were often more useful than tunnels. The smugglers escaped by moving through the living town, assisted by residents who understood and supported their operation.

It brought armed enforcement into the town

Following Cowerson’s death and fears of disorder, dragoons were stationed in Worthing for approximately two years. Their presence made large-scale smuggling much more dangerous and helped break the power of the major gangs.

A Customs vessel had already been stationed off Worthing as part of the coastal blockade against smuggling. Worthing’s coastguard and enforcement presence therefore developed partly in response to the scale of illicit coastal trade.

It left Worthing with a divided identity

At the same time Worthing was developing into a fashionable seaside resort, it retained a reputation as a town of fishermen, smugglers and violent resistance to authority.

That contrast became part of Worthing’s identity: elegant terraces and visiting aristocrats above ground, contraband and secret arrangements behind the respectable façades.

Today, smuggling trails, talks and local-history events continue to use the story to interpret the town’s streets and surviving buildings.

Did modern Worthing bury the evidence?

The extensive redevelopment of Worthing town centre during the 1960s and 1970s removed many historic buildings, yards and street patterns.

The George Inn, the old Theatre Royal and numerous properties around Chapel Road and the High Street disappeared during the construction of the Guildbourne Centre and associated road and shopping developments. Historical accounts of Worthing’s growth record that much of the older High Street was demolished after around 1950.

It is possible that redevelopment destroyed or concealed evidence of cellars and passages before their significance was recognised. But that possibility cuts both ways: because the evidence was not properly recorded, it cannot now be used to prove the more ambitious tunnel legends.

Worthing’s modernisation did not necessarily bury a complete underground highway. It did, however, remove many of the buildings that could have settled the argument.

The verdict: fact, possibility and folklore

The smuggling is fact. Worthing supported large, organised gangs, violent confrontations occurred, local residents helped move contraband and the authorities deployed both coastguards and soldiers against them.

Hidden storage is fact or strongly supported. Cellars, houses, barns, inns, tombs and concealed spaces formed part of the smuggling landscape.

Short underground passages are plausible. Old buildings frequently contained cellars, drains, vaults and connections that could have been adapted for hiding or moving goods.

A continuous tunnel network beneath Worthing remains unproven. No publicly available archaeological survey currently demonstrates a route from the beach to the George Inn, Guildbourne, Tarring, Broadwater or the Downs. West Sussex maintains a Historic Environment Record containing known monuments and archaeological investigations, but the popular town-wide tunnel network has not emerged as an established archaeological asset.

That does not make the legend worthless.

The tunnel stories preserve the memory of a town where secrecy was ordinary, neighbours cooperated against the authorities, respectable businesses mixed with illegal trade, and contraband could disappear from an open beach into hundreds of homes, cellars and country lanes before sunrise.

Worthing may never have possessed the vast subterranean maze imagined in local folklore.

In practice, it did not need one. The entire town was helping to hide what came ashore.