Overview
The Jamaica Inn is a traditional inn on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall in the UK, which was built as a coaching inn in 1750, and has a historical association with smuggling. Located just off the A30, near the middle of the moor close to the hamlet of Bolventor, it was originally used as a staging post for changing horses. The "Tuber" or "Two Barrows" hill, is close by.
The inn was the setting for Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel Jamaica Inn, about the nocturnal activities of a smuggling ring, "portraying a hidden world as a place of tense excitement and claustrophobia of real peril and thrill." In the novel, it was transformed into a rendezvous and warehouse for smuggling that was solely the home of the landlord and his wife. The novel has been adapted into various media, most famously an eponymous 1939 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. However, the inn itself has never actually been used as a filming location.
The inn is also referenced in "Jamaica Inn", a song by Tori Amos from her album The Beekeeper (2005), written while she was driving along the cliffs in Cornwall, and inspired by the legend she had heard of the inn.
Location
Jamaica Inn is on Bodmin Moor, near Bolventor. Brown Willy is situated to the north, while Rough Tor is nearby, as are the valleys of Hantergantick and Hannon. Dozmary Pool is situated south of the inn, while a branch of the Fowey estuary is west. Spread over of land, the Jamaica Inn has been refurbished and functions as an exclusive bed and breakfast establishment, 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, Peverell's Cross, the circular entrenchment near Cardinham, 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.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).