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Jamaica Inn for sale: cash in on the ghosts of a literary past

Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn is for sale. It has an irresistible mix of smuggling, intrigue and literary history Writer’s retreat: Jamaica Inn, Cornwall is attracting interest from seasoned hotel-operators and wealthy individuals across the globe Photo: Alamy By Max Davidson

7:00AM GMT 26 Jan 2014

Take a pretty woman, some unshaven smugglers – plus a shipload of rum – and you have a recipe that sells all over the world. How else to explain the buzz which has greeted the news that the original Jamaica Inn has come on the market?

Thanks to Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name, the 400-year-old inn on Bodmin Moor is so firmly associated with smuggling that you half-expect Customs and Excise officers to burst into the bar and impound the Bacardi.

Few properties in the country have such a colourful and chequered history. Fewer still have just been put up for sale at £2m. It seems a small price for such a valuable piece of literary history, not to mention a working, 17-bedroom inn. Buyers are responding accordingly.

“The interest we have had has been extraordinary,” says Matthew Smith of Christie & Co in Exeter, who are marketing the property. “The Daphne du Maurier connection has got people excited.”

In the smuggling museum attached to the inn, pride of place is occupied by the desk on which du Maurier wrote Rebecca and other classics. “We paid £8,000 for it, and that was more than 10 years ago,” explains John Watts, the present owner of the inn. “People thought we were mad, but it would fetch far more today.”


No writer is more indelibly associated with Cornwall than du Maurier, who spent most of her life in the county. Jamaica Inn is arguably one of her weaker novels, but its evocation of Cornish smuggling in its 19th-century heyday – when the infamous “wreckers” would lure ships on to the rocks – has caught the eye of film-makers since its publication in 1936.

The 1939 Hitchcock film was a turkey – “completely absurd”, admitted the director – thanks to an over-the-top performance by Charles Laughton. At least it gave Maureen O’Hara her first big break as the orphaned heroine Mary Yellan – a role played by Jane Seymour in the ITV serialisation in the Eighties. Change is brewing: Jessica Brown Findlay, in 'Downton Abbey’, will play the heroine created by Daphne du Maurier

Later this year, the BBC will be getting in on the act, with a three-part adaptation starring Jessica Brown Findlay, previously Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey. Expect heaving bosoms, lashings of contraband rum and enough spooky happenings to send a shiver down the nation’s spine.

The present Jamaica Inn is a cosy hostelry, offering cheap-and-cheerful food to passing hordes. It is hard to imagine it providing the setting for a lurid Gothic thriller – what du Maurier called “a place of tense excitement and claustrophobia”. But something of the eerie atmosphere lingers, according to Watts.

“There is something a bit creepy about the place,” he says. “Overnight guests report experiencing weird sensations: rooms suddenly feeling ice-cold even when the radiator is on.” Resident “ghosts” are said to include a mysterious green-cloaked highwayman.

Watts bought the inn for £46,000 in 1976 from the thriller-writer Alistair Maclean, and since then he and his wife, Wendy, have been running it as a hotel. It is a bit out of the way, in the hamlet of Bolventor beside the A30 bypass, but the remote moorland setting contributes to its charm.

Even if you don’t encounter the Beast of Bodmin, the phantom wildcat said to prowl the moor, you can hardly fail to be affected by the bleak Cornish landscape wreathed in fog. If smugglers wanted to escape detection by the excise men, they could hardly have found a better place.

“A lot of inns associated with smugglers are on the sea, for obvious reasons,” adds Watts. “But we are actually quite a long way inland.” It was Jamaica Inn’s strategic trading position, on the turnpike between Launceston and Bodmin, that accounted for its prominence. The contraband sold by the smugglers included silk and tea as well as tobacco and spirits.

Guests have the option of staying in rooms named after characters in the novel, such as Squire Bassat, and pottering around the lovingly stocked museum. Daphne du Maurier fans may not be quite as numerous as Harry Potter fans, but they form a significant constituency. This may explain why there has been so many inquiries. “We have had interest from a whole range of prospective buyers – from seasoned hotel-operators to high net-worth individuals,” explains Matthew Smith. “They are fascinated by the literary associations.”

The new owners of Jamaica Inn will have to pay their taxes like everyone else. But they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t hanker for the days when the bar rang with swashbuckling tales of smugglers and their molls.

Jamaica Inn, which comes with six and a half acres of land, is on the market for £2m with Christie & Co in Exeter (01392 330253, www.christie.com). The inn’s companion hotel, the White Hart in Okehampton, is on the market for £900,000 with the same agent .

Jamaica Inn trivia – did you know?

Daphne du Maurier got the inspiration for Jamaica Inn after staying there in 1930. She had taken refuge in the inn after being stranded in thick fog.

Jamaica Inn was the first of three du Maurier novels to be filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. The others were Rebecca and The Birds.

The film was co-produced by Charles Laughton, who insisted that the unknown Irish actress Maureen O’Hara play the female lead. He later played opposite her again in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Smuggling in Britain dates back to the 13th century, when customs duties were first introduced.

At the height of the smuggling trade, half the brandy smuggled into Britain was landed in Cornwall and Devon.

The most popular Cornish coves for bringing contraband ashore were Polperro on the south coast and Boscastle, Trebarwith and Tintagel on the north coast.

Nineteenth-century smugglers were not held in as low esteem as modern drug-mules. They often got lenient sentences from magistrates, who had consumed their illicit booty.

The BBC’s adaptation of Jamaica Inn, scheduled for broadcast this spring, was filmed in Yorkshire and Cumbria as well as Cornwall.

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