Jamaica Inn, originally a public house and now an inn, is a Grade II listed building in the civil parish of Altarnun, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Located just off the A30, near the middle of Bodmin Moor close to the hamlet of Bolventor, it was built as a coaching house in 1750 as a staging post for changing horses during stagecoach runs over the moor. The hill named Tuber or Two Barrows, 1,122 feet (342 m), is close-by. The inn is known for being the base of smugglers in the past and has gained notoriety for allegedly being one of the most haunted places in Great Britain. It is also known as the setting for Daphne du Mauriers novel of the same name, published in 1936. The young author was inspired to write her novel in 1930 when, having gone horse riding on the moors, she became lost in thick fog and sought refuge at the inn. During the time spent recovering from her ordeal, the local rector is said to have entertained her with ghost stories and tales of smuggling; he would later become the inspiration for the enigmatic character of the Vicar of Altarnun. The novel was made into the film Jamaica Inn in 1939 by Alfred Hitchcock, a 1983 television series, Jamaica Inn, starring Jane Seymour, and another television adaptation in 2014 starring Jessica Brown Findlay directed by Philippa Lowthorpe.[5] In addition to its use in literature, and film, the hotel is referenced in Jamaica Inn, a song written by Tori Amos on her album The Beekeeper, written while she was travelling by car along the road of the Cornwall cliffs, and inspired by the legend she had heard of the inn Jamaica Inn is located on the bleak Bodmin Moor, near Bolventor. Brown Willy is situated 4 miles (6.4 km) to the north, while Rough Tor is nearby, as are the valleys of Hantergantick and Hannon. Dozmary Pool is situated 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south of the inn, while a branch of the Fowey estuary is .5 miles (0.80 km) to the west. Spread over 0.75 acres (0.30 ha) of land, the Jamaica Inn has been refurbished with a theme park face lift and functions as an exclusive bed and breakfast manor, with a pub, a museum and a gift shop. Bodmin is connected by road with St Austell, which is on the London-Penzance line. The farm where British astronomer John Couch Adams was born is nearby. Other landmarks include the Four-hole Cross, Peverells Cross, the circular entrenchment of Cardinkam Bun, and the Knights Templar church ruins at Temple. Between the inn and Kilmarth, a house near Par, can be found hut circles, stone lines and parts of ancient stream works. It is often commonly thought that the inn takes its name from the smugglers who smuggled rum into the country from Jamaica and stored it at the inn. However, the name of the inn is actually said to derive from the important local Trelawney family of landowners, of which two family members served as Governors of Jamaica in the 18th century The inn was built in 1750 and extended in 1778 with a coach house, stables and a tack room assembled in an L-shaped fashion. The inn became a smugglers stopping point while they used approximately 100 secret routes to move around their contraband. Originally, the half-way house was alone on this part of the moor, but later a church, parsonage, and school were added by Mr. Kodd, the proprietor of the land, satisfying the areas residents. According to narrated story, gangs of wreckers operated on the coast of Cornwall during early 19th century. Cornwall has been very aptly described as the “haven of smugglers” in view of its topographic features of “rocky coves, sheltered bays, tumultuous waves and wild and untenanted landscapes” The wreckers ensnared ships to this coast line by tricking them with use of beacon lights, which they purposefully installed on the shores of the coast. Once the ships foundered on the rocky coast they were looted by the wreckers. By 1847, Francis Rodd of Trebartha Hall, who had been High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1845, was building a chapel at Bolventor to accommodate those who lived in the Jamaica Inn area. In 1865, Murray wrote that the inn was frequented in the winter by sportsmen and offered only rudimentary accommodations. The current building still includes the extension of a coach house, stables and a tack room added in 1778. The inn was owned for a period by the novelist Alistair MacLean. The Jamaica Inn’s past notoriety as the pirates den was known to Maurier three years before she wrote her book, when she had lived in the inn, and on the basis of which she had spun her popular novel the “Jamaica Inn”, which was adopted into a melodramatic film of the same name made by Alfred Hitchcock. Before living in the inn, she had resided in Fowey estuary, known earlier as Foreside, a house in Bodinnick and subsequently in Menabilly. She described the nocturnal activities of a smuggling ring based at the now celebrated inn, portraying a hidden world as a place of tense excitement and claustrophobia of real peril and thrill.” It should be noted though that in Du Mauriers novel, the Jamaica Inn is not functionable as an inn with many guests it had in reality, but was solely the home of the landlord and a rendezvous and storagehouse for smuggling. In the popular film made by Hitchcock in 1939 with the pirates story line, the heroine’s role of a young girl who encounters the gangsters in the Jamaica Inn as “Lady Vanishes” was played by Maureen O’ Hara in her debut appearance while the main role of the ugly and fierce leader of the pirates was played by Laughton. The young girl finds out that her uncle is a member of the gang, and a young man accused of treason is about to be hanged. She soon cuts the noose around the young man and assists him to escape through the backdoor.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:43:36 +0000