I’m not a moonraker by birth but as Wiltshire is, by now, my adopted county I feel justified in calling myself pretty well a real moonraker.
The legend that leads to this name for Wiltshire men and women concerns smuggling and the way the locals, deemed silly and stupid, completely outwitted the excise men by pretending that they were trying to recover a cheese from a pond. It was a reflection of the moon – but when the laughing revenue team went off, the wily Wiltshiremen were able to rake out their barrels of contraband.
Not surprisingly this tale and variants of it have sold well, locally on postcards and here is one of them.
Oddly, this was never part of my own collection but was one my sister had. It has passed to me now.
Locksands Life 