Filming Jamaica Inn in Cornwall (PICS)

written by Ana on 05 October 2013

We have added some new photos of Jessica Brown Findlay as she films a BBC drama at Holywell Bay near Newquay (just 15 minutes away from me! I wish I had known, boo)  Jess, who played Lady Sybil in the ITV costume drama, is to star in a BBC adaptation of Jamaica Inn – penned by Fowey’s legendary author Daphne du Maurier.

The actress, who is cast as Mary Yellan, the main character in the 1936 novel, can be seen on the north Cornwall beach with her fellow cast members and crew as they film scenes for the three part 60 minute drama, which is set to hit ours screens next year. It is being directed by BAFTA-winning Philippa Lowthorpe, whose previous hit shows include Call The Midwife and Five Daughters, and other scenes are set to shot on Bodmin Moor in the coming days.

Set in 1820 against the backdrop of the windswept Cornish moors, the story follows Mary’s journey when she is forced to live with an aunt at the eponymous inn after the death of her mother and discovers it to be the hub of a smuggling ring.

Other cast members include Matthew McNulty (The Paradise, Room At The Top) as Jem Merlyn, Sean Harris (The Borgias, Southcliffe) as Joss Merlyn and Joanne Whalley (The Borgias, Gossip Girl) as Aunt Patience.

Daphne du Maurier lived at Readymoney cottage in Fowey, with her three children, from 1942 to 1943, before moving onto the grander Menabilly house near Par. The author arrived in Fowey with her three children under a storm of controversy. Whilst living there du Maurier wrote the family saga, Hungry Hill, based on stories she was told by an illegitimate male partner, but the novel was badly received by critics in 1943.

In letters to a friend at the time, a 34-year-old du Maurier admitted suffering from “many probings and thinkings” and needed to move to Cornwall in order to “sort myself out”. Not only was Cornwall the home of her mother and sisters, but it had already served as inspiration for two of her best-loved novels, Rebecca and Frenchman’s Creek. When the Readymoney lease ran out in 1943, the author moved to the nearby Menabilly.

Filming of Jamaica Inn will also take place in Yorkshire and Cumbria.

  

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