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Welcome to the badger inn

An award winning inn

Virginia Woolf At The Badger Inn

Situated in the heart of the wonderful village of Lelant.

Our wonderful pub was given its present name in 1975. Previously known as the The New Inn, Praed’s Arms, then The Lelant Arms (1899-1975), it was considerably extended and modernized in 1900, becoming the building we know today.

Three of Virginia Woolf’s letters describe her visits to the Badger Inn.

Late in the morning of Christmas Eve 1909 Virginia Woolf- then Virginia Stephen- made a snap decision to come to Cornwall. She caught the 1pm train from Paddington and arrived at what is now the Badger Inn at 10.30pm on Friday 24th December 1909. Thomas and Sarah Dunstan, the landlord and his wife, were probably surprised at this late booking, but may have been glad for the business as The Lelant Hotel had no other guests.

Virginia’s love affair with Cornwall is well documented and was as strong as ever. On Christmas Day, in a letter to her artist sister, Vanessa Bell, she says:

“ I am so drugged with fresh air I can’t write, and now my ink fails. As for the beauty of this place, it surpasses every other season. I have the hotel to myself- and get a very nice sitting room for nothing. It is very comfortable and humble, and infinitely better than the Lizard or St Ives”
The former sitting room is now the area with the fireplace at the far end of the bar.

On boxing day Virginia was in her bedroom (we believe it was room 1) when she wrote to her brother-in-law, Clive Bell:
” It is past nine o’clock, and the people still sing carols beneath my window, which is open, owing to the clemency of the night. I am at the crossroads, and at the centre of the gossip of the village,”…. “Then there is a lighthouse (Godrevy), seen as through steamy glass, and a grey flat where the sea is. There is no moon, or stars, but the air is soft as down, and one can see trees on the ridge of the road, and the shapes of everything without any detail.”… “ After dinner is a very pleasant time…as one sits by the fire, thinking how one staggered up Tren Crom in the mist this afternoon, and sat on a granite tomb on the top, and surveyed the land, with the rain dripping against one’s skin.”…

The following day Virginia wrote to her friend Violet Dickinson:
”I have been tramping about the country, and dabbling in the Atlantic. It is as soft as Spring, and at 10 o’clock at night I sit with my window open; old farmers are saying good night, and calling the weather dirty beneath me. How any one, with an immortal soul can live inland, I can’t imagine; only clods and animals should be able to endure it.”

Virginia’s second visit to The Lelant Hotel was for a few days early in March 1910, accompanied by her sister and brother-in-law, Vanessa and Clive Bell.

We believe Virginia also spent the night of Monday 5th September 1910 here, at the end of a walking holiday with Jean Thomas, proprietor of the nursing home at Twickenham where Virginia had undergone a rest cure in July and August. In correspondence she mentions spending her last night in Cornwall at Lelant; having visited The Badger twice before, Virginia might well have chosen us again. If so, we hope she enjoyed her stay.