Goldeneye

A pool with a goldeneye was built recently

In the picturesque Oracabessa Bay on the north coast of Jamaica you will find Goldeneye: 15 acres of land that Ian Fleming (1908-1964) bought for £2,000. It is there he built his retreat house, where he spent 2 months every year and where he wrote all his James Bond stories. Nowadays a luxury resort is being built in the estate but with luck they will show you the house Ian Fleming built in 1946, as well as some of the beautiful villas and cosy cottages.

Low Cay Beach, where Bizot Bar Pool overlooks the sea.

Fleming Room, where the walls are lined with Ian Fleming’s historic photos.

Fleming villa

Fleming chose local architects Scovell and Barber to bring to life the sketches he had made back in London. For him it was essential that the building should be simple and that there should be no glass in the windows so that the birds could fly through.

The garden and sea from inside Goldeneye

"I wrote every one of the Bond thrillers here with the jalousies closed around me so that I would not be distracted by the birds and the flowers and the sunshine outside", said Fleming. "Would these books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday? I doubt it"

The pond at the back of Fleming´s house

Fleming´s private beach

Much of the attraction for Jamaica was an escape from the cold of a London winter. "Sun is always shining in my books - a state of affairs which minutely lifts the spirits of the English reader taking him out of his dull surroundings into a warmer, more colourful, more luxurious world"  

Fleming bridge

Lagoon villas from the spa

Three Bond books and films Live and Let Die, Dr No and The Man with the Golden Gun feature prominent scenes in Jamaica. Perhaps the most memorable is when Ursula Andress emerged from the sea wearing a white bikini, which would change fashion.

Ian Fleming called his house Goldeneye after a wartime operation he had planned for the defence of Gibraltar, if Spain entered the war. It was also a happy coincidence that its location, Oracabessa, meant "Golden Head" in Spanish. Goldeneye may also refer to the 1941 Carson McCullers novel Reflections in a Golden Eye.

If you want to spend some holidays here, the local airport is near.

Reference and Quotations:

Parker, Matthew, Goldeneye Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming´s Jamaica, Hutchinsons, 2014