Pubs and Inns, Museums and Galleries

Jamaica Inn and Museums

Bolventor, Launceston, Cornwall PL15 7TS

Tel: 01566 86250 Fax: 01566 86177

e-mail: enquiry@jamaicainn.co.uk

website: www.jamaicainn.co.uk

Built in the mid 18th century to serve travellers making the journey on the new turnpike road between Launceston and Bodmin, Jamaica Inn has become one of the best known hostelries in the country if not the world thanks to novelist Daphne du Maurier. Whilst staying here in the 1920s, she was taken with the romance of the surrounding bleak moorland and fascinated by tales of smugglers and villains who met here.

Today, the inn still serves travellers who can enjoy a drink in the Smugglers bar, dinner in the du Maurier Restaurant or relax by a roaring log fire before retiring to one of the inn's comfortable guest rooms. However, there is much more here than an atmospheric, 300 year old inn. Tales of smugglers and the arch villain, Demon Davey, vicar of Altarnun, are told through a theatrical presentation at the Smugglers at Jamaica Inn exhibition whilst more can be learnt of Daphne herself in the Daphne du Maurier Room. Many of her novels are based in Cornwall where she came to live with her husband in the 1930s and the room here is filled with memorabilia including her Sheraton writing desk.

Finally, there is Mr Potter's Museum of Curiosity, a fascinating collection of tableaux created by the Victorian taxidermist, Walter Potter. Visitors can see Steptoe and Son's bear and Walter's first tableau, the Death and Burial of Cock Robin, along with smoking memorabilia, Victorian toys and dolls' houses and some curious oddities.

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