The Hellfire Caves - home of the "wicked" Hellfire Club
The Hellfire Caves are a network of man-made chalk and flint caverns which extend 260m underground near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. They were a meeting place of the Hellfire Club in the mid-1700s - an association of upper class rakes and radicals.
The caves were excavated between 1748 and 1752 for Sir Francis Dashwood, co-founder of the Hellfire Club. In latter days, the caves were opened to the public and have been operating as a tourist attraction since 1863.
Social clubs for aristocratic men were very popular in the 1700s - serving various interests, such as an appreciation of the arts, or of foreign culture and ideas. Sir Francis Dashwood was extremely anti-Catholic and his club came to be seen as generally anti-church and immoral. The club motto was Fais ce que tu voudras (Do what thou wilt), a philosophy later used by Aleister Crowley.
Members addressed each other as "brother" and their leader as the "abbot" whilst conducting obscene parodies of religious rites. Many famous men of the era have been rumoured to have been members of the Hellfire Club, but all records were burned in 1774.
The Hellfire Club faded in the 1760s as the original members aged, fell into trouble with the government, or died.
The caves run into the hillside above West Wycombe village and directly beneath St Lawrence's Church and Mausoleum (which were also constructed by Sir Francis Dashwood around the same time the caves were excavated). West Wycombe Park, ancestral seat of the Dashwood family and also a National Trust property, lies directly across the valley.
The unusual design of the caves was much inspired by Sir Francis Dashwood's visits to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria and other areas of the Ottoman Empire during his Grand Tour. The caves extend 0.25 miles (400 m) underground, with the individual caves or "chambers" connected by a series of long, narrow tunnels and passageways.
The underground chambers include the Banqueting Hall (allegedly the largest man-made chalk cavern in the world), a subterranean river named the Styx, and, beyond it, the final cave, the Inner Temple, where the meetings of the Hellfire Club were held, and which is said to lie 300 feet (90 m) directly beneath the church on top of West Wycombe hill.
The Hellfire Caves continue to be open to the public.
Further reading
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