Jamaica Inn stands on Bodmin Moor near Bolventor, just off the A30, and it has kept the road for a long time. An inn has stood here since 1547; the present building was raised as a coaching inn in 1750 and extended in 1778 with a coach house and stables. The name is said to come from the Trelawney family, two of whom served as Governors of Jamaica.
The novel
Daphne du Maurier set her 1936 novel Jamaica Inn here, and Alfred Hitchcock's film of 1939 followed it. The inn itself was never used as the filming location, which is one of the small ironies of the place: the story made the house famous, and the house kept its own character.
The house today
Grade II listed since 1988, the inn was owned for a period by the novelist Alistair MacLean. It housed Mr Potter's Museum of Curiosities from 1984 to 2003, and now contains the Museum of Smuggling, which is the sort of thing that happens to a coaching inn with this history.
Sources
Last checked: 2026-10-11