Jane Jackson was born in Goole in Yorkshire, but her father's job as a civil engineer brought them to Cornwall when she was two. They lived in the nursery wing of a large mansion near Tregony until they moved to the village near Falmouth that has been her home ever since. Their house, three floors high, made of bricks that had been used as ship's ballast, and with iron bars on the top windows, was one of a terrace of three constructed by a Captain Garland who built them as a curse on those who had refused him permission to extend his own house.

As far as her mother was concerned, the only curse was the primitive facilities: no mains water (this was obtained from the pump in the middle of the street), no electricity upstairs, a tin bath on a nail outside the back door, a Cornish range for cooking, and an earth closet toilet fifty yards up the garden. When her father arranged to have mains water laid on in the village, the local people complained bitterly. They didn't like the taste!