Jamaica Inn – Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, England

For the romantically inclined the name Jamaica Inn conjures up visions of the Daphne Du Maurier Inn where smuggling and ill deeds abounded. A sinister Inn, set in the middle of hostile moorland, where no one speaks of things they see and hear in the dead of night for fear of capture by the excise men or worse, death at the hands of the villains trying to evade them. It is all very mysterious and exciting.

I saw the road signs to Jamaica Inn from the A 30 motorway as we headed towards Lands End at the bottom of the country. I wanted to go and see Jamaica Inn, I just had to go. I was with my cousin Martha and we were to meet our friend Jan down at Newquay and spend a few days exploring lovely Cornwall.

We enjoyed a very pleasurable 4 days rambling around Cornwall and on our last day we decided to drop in at Jamaica Inn for morning tea on our way back to Oxford. Jan was going back to Newquay but she accompanied us to the Inn before we said goodbye.

Built in 1750, Jamaica Inn was a welcome coaching stop for travellers between Launceston and Bodmin after crossing the wild and treacherous moor. Jamaica Inn was remote and isolated so it was an ideal place to stop on the way to Devon. Local folk lore says it was named Jamaica Inn because it did a brisk trade in rum. In addition to giving rest to weary travellers it is believed to have been associated with Smuggling as half the rum and a quarter of the tea in those days was suspected of being smuggled into England along the coastline of Cornwall.

A place that has stood in such a location for 400 years is bound to have a few legends attached to it, Jamaica inn proudly mentions its ghosts and some of the known events of the area as well as the Daphne du Maurier literary connection. There is even a plaque on the floor where Joss Merlyn was murdered but that is just a fantasy as Joss Merlin was the horrible innkeeper in the Daphne du Maurier story.

As we left the motorway I looked forward to a drive across Bodmin Moor to Jamaica Inn so I was a bit disappointed to find that Jamaica Inn is no longer remote and isolated but sits above the Motorway which cuts through the moor. I was even more surprised to find that there were some houses across the road which made it rather suburban.

As I stood out the front of the Inn in the pale sunlight the wind caught the sign overhead and it swung, making an eerie screeching sound – just as one would expect of an Inn with such a reputation. At least that pleased me.

Sitting at a picnic table in front of the Inn was a nondescript woman who alternated between eyeing us suspiciously (as you would expect any good Cornwallian to do where strangers are concerned) and ignoring us completely. I tried to catch her eye to nod a greeting but she looked away hastily so I gave up and focused on our next move.

We decided to view the Smugglers Museum first so we opened the door and found ourselves in a small foyer with a desk and cash register but no one was there to serve us. We waited and looked around at the implements on the walls and, quite some time later, the woman who had been eyeing us suspiciously came and stood behind the counter, she said nothing and hardly looked at us either.

Jan said ,”Can I have some tickets please”.

“How many of you are there?” asked the woman.

Jan hesitated, wasn’t it obvious there were three of us, but she remained polite and simply said “Three”.

“So you want three tickets then” the woman asked.

Jan said “Yes” and so the dialogue went on.

After a while, tickets still not bought, dialogue continued, it reminded me of Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers and his style of customer relations. I had to turn away and face the wall in an effort to stifle my laughter, I needed to compose my face and wipe the smirk off it too. Eventually we had our tickets and we stood there and I asked “Where do we go ?”

“Through that door” the woman replied huffily,” it's one way you can’t come back this way” she added as if it was a warning

Mmmmmmm I thought, was this a plot, will we be trapped forever by her dastardly plan? We took the risk anyway and off we went through the door.

The first part of the Museum was a cheesy interactive display that had movement sensors and it told the story of Joss Merlyn and the Daphne du Maurier Jamaica Inn story. As one section finished you walked along to the next and the story resumed. Although it was cheesy I had forgotten the Jamaica Inn story so it was good to be reminded. Once the story was finished we found ourselves going through a door into the museum itself.

The museum was crammed full of glass cases and smuggling artefacts from all over England and covering periods of several hundred years. It would have been nice to have the displays a little more spaced out but there was a lot of very interesting things there. In the foyer there was a man trap. it was clearly labelled but ladies, if you caught a man with this contraption there would not be much left of him and what there was wouldn’t be worth having.

The Man Trap hanging on the wall (note, not designed to catch a prospective husband)

There was a lot of very interesting and thought provoking information on the walls too. We may think of smuggling as illegal and perhaps immoral and it certainly gave rise to an industry that was fraught with violence and intrigue but one needs to take a step back to the time before excise (tax) was introduced in Britain during the 1640’s. Prior to that time people traded, they had goods to sell, they moved them about, sent them to and from Europe and all over the world, they were paid a fair price for their goods and everyone was happy. Then one day the government decided they wanted a cut, money for nothing as it were, each item brought into the country had to have a tax paid upon it. Naturally, people who were trading resented this, as did their customers, because it meant the price of the goods went up to cover the cost of excise.

Things were different in those days. Today we are used to paying taxes and in return we usually get an inept government who manage to spend some of our money on roads and infrastructure which is what we have become used to. Back then there was no infrastructure, a road was a track and if it had holes in it so be it. There was no running water, no social security or medicare and of course there was no electricity.

The one thing that the museum taught me was that the excise they were charging on goods such as rum and tea was not very fair because there was no reward for those who had to pay it. I felt sympathy for them and looked upon smugglers in a new light. However, around that time there was a great side industry of luring ships on to the rocks and collecting their cargo from the shores and selling it. This part of the trade was despicable because many people lost their lives.

It was an interesting museum and, of course, there was the free entertainment upon entry which I cannot guarantee everyone will receive but it was time to find out what the hospitality of Jamaica Inn was like so we headed inside to partake of morning tea.

The Inn itself is very old and, although it has had some modifications, the low ceilings and old exposed beams in the bar area are original and very atmospheric although it was not particularly spooky. We went past the smugglers bar into the dining room to place our orders, we then returned to the bar area to wait. We chose a table along the wall between the old smugglers bar and the newer dining area and Jan sat in a nook on an old bench like chair with a padded seat. We sat chatting for a while then suddenly Jan shivered and said she felt a shaft of icy air. We assumed it was a draught and looked for its source but we found nothing.

Here is what she had to say about her experience:

"When we first walked in we walked to the other end of the bar and then turned to the right.The area was empty and I stood there and thought to myself,now where do I want to sit? I looked around the room and was drawn to the seat in the alcove,a really old looking seat it was.I think there was a window behind it I seem to recall.I made myself comfortable on the seat and waited for your good self and Martha to join me. All of a sudden I went cold all over,and thought to myself I must have sat in somebody's seat and they weren't too happy about it. I also felt as if the top of my head was being touched or tickled or played with in some way. I wasn't spooked by it at all,it didn't feel threatening in any way, in fact it was a nice sensation. How wierd is that, touched by a spook and enjoying it."

When Jan went off to use the facilities I sat in the spot to see what I could feel.

At first nothing happened but eventually the icy feeling hit me too. It was cold as cold could be and I looked again for a source of draughts but found nothing, not even wall repairs or floor repairs that might have indicated the nook had once been some kind of shaft to a cellar. I sat for a while and got the distinct impression I was sitting in someone’s place. although at the time Jan and I had not discussed it so we could not have known we both got the same impression. I then recalled a time when I was on a ghost tour in Windsor in Australia, there were lots of people on the tour and I was listening intently to the guide and suddenly a shadow passed right through me and it was the same icy cold. Oh well, I wonder on whose lap Jan and I had been sitting and whether or not he enjoyed it.

The old bar at Jamaica Inn

I liked Jamaica Inn even though it was no longer remote and isolated, the moor no longer wild and untamed. The bracken has been removed and it has been fenced for grazing like so many English Moors these days .

Bodmin Moor, the ditch in the foreground is the motorway which runs through Bodmin Moor

You best get yourself there and try to find the cold spot yourself. If you go in the front door to the end of the bar and turn right the old chair had its back to the wall between the bar and the dining room.

How to get there. Head south through Cornwall on the A30 and you cannot miss the big signs.

Authors Note: We also went to The First Inn in England which is a few miles north of Lands End, great food and cosy atmosphere and they have a smugglers tunnel in the floor just near the bar.

This story extracted from Where is Hazel.com

Hazel Leung