Daphne Du Maurier brought this 17th Century Inn into the world spotlight with her book, The Jamaica Inn. I remember reading and loving it, but until I actually got to walk on the cobblestones, it didn't become very real. Last time I was here it was a misty moisty horrible moor day. Age and I had just ridden through sleet on our motorcycles and stopped here a while. A real modern day coaching house.
Daphne Du Maurier had a wonderful imagination and threaded half stories, characters from her head and those she had met to weave her tales into reality. This Inn would have served as the half way point along the moors, back then a treacherous place full of thieves and smugglers. It no doubt turned a blind eye toward the numerous seedy characters using the stables and rooms.
There were many tales of the unsavoury characters who lived and 'worked' in the area, including organised gangs of wreckers who operated along the coast of Cornwall. Cornwall in the early 19th century was described as the “haven of smugglers”.
The gangs of men used to trick ships to sail close to the coastline by using beacon lights, which they purposefully installed on the shores of the cliffs. Once the ships wrecked on the rocky coast they were looted by the wreckers and surviving sailors dispatched quickly.
The Jamaica Inn became a smugglers inn or stopping point and apparently used approximately 100 secret routes to move around their contraband, storing it at the inn before selling it or moving it on. Apparently smuggling became such a problem that there was an act of parliament to take the duty and taxes off the main contraband items, and thus discouraged economically, smugglers in their work.
Below are photos from the smugglers museum. Some were pretty gory and horrible, others inspiring in their ingenuity to fool the 'kings men' and tax collectors.
A 18th centruy smuggler, with blackened face.
A oil can with a false dipping cylinder.
A safe box with a false bottom
A failed way to smuggle in jewellery.
The haunted dining room.
