Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn stands in an exposed spot at Bolventor, high on Bodmin Moor beside the old trunk road that is now the A30. Built around 1750 as a coaching inn and staging post, it served travellers crossing the bleak upland and gained a lasting association with the moor's smuggling trade. Its fame owes much to Daphne du Maurier, whose 1936 novel of the same name was inspired by a stay here in 1930; today it operates as an inn, restaurant and smugglers' museum.

Local tradition holds that a traveller was once murdered on the premises, and visitors report footsteps in empty rooms, a man in old-fashioned dress seen in the courtyard, and voices said to speak in Cornish. Guests and paranormal groups describe cold spots and the sense of being watched, and the inn is a regular fixture on ghost-tour itineraries.

Much of Jamaica Inn's reputation is entwined with du Maurier's fiction and its role as a moorland landmark. The accounts are numerous but anecdotal, and the isolation and weather of the moor lend themselves to atmosphere. It remains an evocative place to visit rather than a verified case.

Jamaica Inn is a privately run inn, hotel and restaurant with a smuggling museum, open to the public year-round; the bar and grounds are free to enter, while the museum charges admission. As a working business on an exposed moorland site, opening can be affected by weather and season.

Please visit respectfully, follow staff guidance, and remember it is a functioning hospitality venue as well as a curiosity.