The Battle of Goudhurst, 1747: When a Kent Village Took On England's Most Violent Smuggling Gang - and Won

Day 10 of 15. Yesterday's story was a medieval siege that ended with thirteen men hanged from Leeds Castle's own battlements. Today's is more recent and, in its own way, more remarkable: a Kent village that got sick of being terrorised by England's most violent smuggling gang, armed itself, and fought them off outside its own parish church.

By the 1740s, the Hawkhurst Gang controlled smuggling across a swathe of Kent and Sussex, moving tea, brandy and wool past the customs men with a private army sometimes 500 strong. They weren't shy about it, either - gang members had beaten, shot and killed excise officers and informers for years, and local magistrates were too frightened, or too well paid, to intervene. Goudhurst, a hilltop village a few miles from Hawkhurst itself, sat squarely in the gang's territory. One of its most senior members, Thomas Kingsmill, was a Goudhurst man born and bred.

In early 1747, a group of Goudhurst men had had enough. They formed a militia - the Goudhurst Band of Militia - under “General” William Sturt, a former army corporal, and openly defied the gang. Kingsmill was furious. He rode into the village, according to the accounts that survive, and threatened to burn it to the ground and kill its residents unless the militia disbanded and Sturt was handed over to him. He set a deadline: 21 April 1747.

The militia didn't disband. On the appointed day, the Hawkhurst Gang marched on Goudhurst - dozens of men, some reportedly stripped to the waist to show off old scars and tattoos as a show of intimidation. Sturt's militia had taken up position in and around St Mary's Church, on the highest point in the village, and opened fire as the gang approached. The first volley killed Kingsmill's own brother, George. Two more gang members died in the fighting that followed before the rest broke and fled. Not a single militiaman was killed. It's remembered locally, with only a little exaggeration, as the Battle of Goudhurst - and several accounts credit that one bloody afternoon with breaking the Hawkhurst Gang's grip on the area for good.

Thomas Kingsmill didn't stay free for long. He was eventually convicted over an unrelated raid on the custom house at Poole, and hanged at Tyburn in London on 26 April 1749, alongside fellow gang members William Fairall and Richard Perin. London wasn't the end of it: Kingsmill's body was brought back to Kent and hung in chains - gibbeted - at Goudhurst itself, left on public display near the scene of his defeat as a warning to anyone tempted to take up the family trade. Fairall's body was gibbeted separately at Horsendown Green. The gang's other leader, Arthur Gray, had already been executed at Tyburn the year before, in May 1748. William Sturt, the militia's own “General,” lived out his later years rather less dramatically, as warden of the Goudhurst workhouse.

St Mary's Church is still very much standing and still an active parish church, part of the Goudhurst and Kilndown benefice. It's a Grade I listed building with roots going back to 1119, though the current tower is a 1638 rebuild - the original was destroyed when lightning struck the spire in 1637, melting all five bells inside it. What the church is known for today is its view, not its history: the tower looks out over the Weald into three counties - Kent, Sussex and Surrey - on a clear day, and that view is what draws most people up the hill. Nothing on site marks what happened here in 1747. No plaque, no information board. You have to already know to stand by the tower and picture a few dozen armed men being driven back down the slope.

Here's the part that's harder to shake off. The Star and Eagle, the pub directly across the green from the church, isn't just an old building with a vague smuggling theme hung on it for atmosphere - Kent's own Historic Environment Record names it as the Hawkhurst Gang's base, the place where Kingsmill and his men are recorded as having planned their raids before marching up the hill to burn the village out. The same record notes a long-standing local claim, never confirmed, of a tunnel running from the pub's cellar to the church itself - treat that one as folklore, not fact, in the spirit of this whole series. What is fact: the pub is still open, still serves Sunday lunch and still lets rooms, a few dozen metres from the spot where the militia killed Kingsmill's brother. Most people eating there today have no idea they're sitting in the room where it was planned.

Source: Wikipedia, Hawkhurst Gang, Wikipedia, St Mary's Church, Goudhurst and Kent Historic Environment Record, Star and Eagle Inn