Bolventor () is a hamlet on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated in Altarnun civil parish between Launceston and Bodmin.[Ordnance Survey: Landranger map sheet 201 Plymouth & Launceston ]
Toponymy
The hamlet has been said to take its name from the "Bold Venture" that it must have appeared to build a farm in this moorland, but this is probably
folk etymology, as "Bol-" is a common prefix in Cornish placenames. It is much more likely that the name derives from the 'Bold Adventure' tin-working area which was in operation near Jamaica Inn during the 1840s-1850s
[R. D. Penhallurick Tin in Antiquity (2008) Maney; p. 207.]
Jamaica Inn
Bolventor is the location of the famous
Jamaica Inn coaching inn. It is bypassed by a
dual carriageway section of the A30 trunk road; before the bypass was built the hamlet straddled the A30 road.
Daphne du Maurier, a former resident, chose Bolventor as the setting for her novel about Cornish smuggling titled Jamaica Inn. The inn that inspired the novel, Jamaica Inn, has stood beside the main road through the village since 1547. It is now a tourist attraction in its own right and dominates the hamlet. The Jamaica Inn was the subject of a paranormal investigation during a 2004 episode of reality television programme Most Haunted.
Church
The former Holy Trinity Church that lies to the east of the hamlet closed some years ago. A mile from Bolventor there was a chapel of St Luke (from the 13th to the early 16th century): the font is now at the church of
Tideford.
[ Cornish Church Guide (1925) Truro: Blackford; p. 62.] Bolventor parish was established in 1846 (before that date the village was in St Neot parish; the new parish was made up of parts of St Neot, Altarnun and Cardinham parishes
[Beacham, Peter & Pevsner, Nikolaus (2014). Cornwall. New Haven: Yale University Press. ; p. 117.]) but has now been merged with
Altarnun.
1945 air disaster
On 14 September 1945 a Royal Air Force Handley Page Halifax Mk VII (PN305) was operating a flight from RAF Tarrant Rushton,
Dorset, to
Lajes Field,
