Early in the century the trade of contraband goods – or in other words smuggling – was considerable. Foremost therein was a Mr. Richard Garby who lived at Cold Harbor near Barry. He had done well in the business in his younger days and lived a life of comparative ease and influence in his middle life, at which period he married. After this things did not go well for him. Better by far would it have been had he realized all that he had was invested in the profitable but risky business. For now things were not directed with the energy of former years and the profits were turned into a positive loss. He trusted much to a man named Matthew Stephens who gradually acquired the management of affairs and indeed so “managed” matters that his master’s wealth was gradually transferred to himself. Mr. Garby died in debt.
Mr. Stephens became rich and died rich, but however his ill-gotten gains did his family no good. Brought up in a household where extravagance was the order of the day so long as smuggling lasted (and it lasted quite through Mr. Stephens life) they had none of them when the trade was over. The most rudimentary notion of economy and frugality, and the song of “light come, light go” had come to an end.
Mathew Stephens lived at Aberthaw in great respectability; the secret of his success was known even in these early days that unless a man is “respectable” it will never do for him to attempt to make a gain by hand. A good name is indeed a jewel to him, for with it, he could do no evil thing.
Mr. Stephens’ respectable building was a perfect nest of secret nooks and corners most ingeniously and cunningly contrived whereby a large “run” of goods could be stowed away speedily and safely. Outside contrivances were legion; it used to be a belief at The Leys in round about that there must still be great quantities of smuggled goods awaiting discovery about them: they having been concealed in such abundance and with so much art that the concealers themselves could not find them, once having forgotten the clue to their place of concealment. The spirit of the old smuggler exists in his descendants and his grandchildren are full of craft, cleverness, and guile.
His gravestone reads “Mathew Stephens of Aberthaw d. 5 July, 1832, a native of St. Austle in co. Conwall. Elizabeth his wife d. 5 June 1856 aged 86.