The Jamaica Wine House, known locally as "the Jampot", is located in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in the heart of London's financial district. It was the first coffee house in London and was visited by the English diarist Samuel Pepys in 1660.^[1] It is now a Grade II listed public house^[2] and is set within a labyrinth of medieval courts and alleys in the City of London. It lies in the ward of Cornhill.

The Jamaica Wine House has historic links to the sugar trade of the West Indies and the Ottoman Empire. There is a plaque on the wall which reads "Here stood the first London Coffee house at the sign of the Pasqua Rosee's Head 1652." Pasqua Rosée, the proprietor, was the servant of a Levant Company merchant named Daniel Edwards, a trader in Ottoman goods, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment. The coffee house, which opened in 1652, is known in some accounts as The Turk's Head.^[3][4][5]

The building that currently stands on the site, a Victorian public house, dates from 1885.^[6] This pub's licence was acquired by Shepherd Neame^[7] and the premises were reopened after a restoration that finished in April 2009. There is a wood-panelled bar with three sections on the ground floor and downstairs restaurant.

Most of the coffee houses in 17th and 18th century London were involved in the transoceanic slave trade in some way. The Jamaica Coffee House accommodated all sorts of individuals buying and selling cargo from Jamaica, including people.

'To be Sold Cheap, THE Nancy Pleasure-Yacht, Lute stern’d, Burthen about twenty Tons, with very good Accommodations, sails very well, and exceedingly well sound, now lying near the King’s Mills, Rotherhith [sic]. Also a Negro Boy, about fifteen Years old, every Way qualified to attend on Gentlemen or Ladies. For further Particulars enquire at the Bar of the Jamaica Coffee-House in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill.' Daily Advertiser, London 2nd August 1744.^[8]

London newspapers throughout the late 1600s and 1700s printed many appeals for information regarding enslaved and bonded runaways that gave the Jamaica coffee house as their point of contact.^[9] Like the advert placed on the 8th August 1728 seeking information about an African woman aged about 25, known as Caelia Edlyne, who chose to leave the house and service of her unnamed ‘master’ in Blackheath. ^[10] The use of the surname Edlyne indicates that she was connected to, and named by, a member of the Edlyne family.

The use of the Jamaica Coffee House as a point of contact indicates Caelia and the Edlyne's have a connection to Jamaica. An Edmund Edlyne is recorded as owner of the River, Mountain and Wag Water (later known as Prospect), plantations in St Andrew and St Thomas in the East parishes of Jamaica in the early 1700’s.^[11] Residing in Kingston, Edmund was a member of the ‘Council in Assembly of Jamaica’ ^[12] who returned to England some time prior to 1712 ^[13] and is named in another advert seeking the capture and return of a mixed heritage enslaved man called Andrew in 1713, who was employed as a domestic servant in Hampshire.

‘Andrew, of a middle Stature, 23 Years old, 4 of his Teeth of his upper Jaw out before, pitted with the Small-Pox, has short Nails on his Fingers, speaks good English, wears a light-grey Cloath Livery Coat, lined with Red... Run away from his Master Colonel Edmund Edlyne from King’s-Cleare in Hampshire, and ‘tis believed he is In or about London’^[14]

By 1717 he had decided to remain in England and was, at that time, lodged in Woodford, Essex. Records reveal that, now a widower, he married Ann Elletson, who was connected to another family of planters in St Andrews Jamaica.^{[15] [16][17]}

Edmund and Ann Edlyne’s access to enslaved people of colour in Jamaica indicates that Caelia accompanied either or both of them to Britain prior to 1728. Edmund later passed his Jamaican properties over to his son Thomas, which were later inherited by his grandson Thomas Hope Edlyne.^[18] The advert mentions that Caelia bore the ‘Mark of her Country’ revealing that she was born in Africa, in one of many cultures that employed scarification as a medicinal treatment.^[19]

• English coffeehouses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

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