Hellfire Caves

Cut into the chalk hillside above West Wycombe between 1748 and 1752, the Hellfire Caves were commissioned by Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the notorious Hellfire Club, whose members allegedly held secret rites deep in the tunnels under the motto "Fais ce que tu voudras" — do what thou wilt. Local legend attaches the caves to Suki, a village girl said to have been killed by a mob after being lured into a prank near the site in the 18th century; her cries are reported echoing through the passages, along with unexplained cold spots and shadowy figures glimpsed by staff since the caves reopened as a tourist attraction in 1951. Some visitors describe an oppressive feeling of being watched deep in the inner chamber.

Almost everything about the Hellfire Caves is remembered backwards. The tunnels are famous for a club that may never have met in them, and forgotten for the thing that actually put men underground: three failed harvests. The crops failed at West Wycombe in 1748, in 1749 and again in 1750. The village lived on farm labour and there was none. Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet, owned the hill above it, and on its flank there had been an open-cast chalk quarry since at least the Middle Ages, worked for house foundations and road metal; it appears in one of William Hannan's paintings of the 1740s. Instead of distributing relief, Dashwood extended that quarry inwards and paid men to dig. The wage, according to the estate's own history, was one shilling a day, "enough in those times to keep body and soul together". The chalk had a destination. The road from West Wycombe to High Wycombe — then part of the London-to-Oxford route — ran along the valley bottom and had been rutted so deep that carriages routinely overturned in wet weather. Dashwood's replacement ran three miles in a straight line, framing a view of his own hilltop church tower and its gilded ball. The estate dates the work to 1748–1754 and the road to 1752. It was consistent with the man: he had already argued in Parliament for public works to soak up rural unemployment. What is not consistent is the shape of the hole. Widening the existing quarry would have produced the same chalk and the same wages. Instead the diggers drove a winding tunnel a quarter of a mile into the hill, with side passages, a great chamber halfway down, a pool of standing water crossed by stepping stones, and a domed circular chamber at the far end with a hook in the roof for a lamp. The estate's own account is disarmingly honest about this: "We are not entirely sure of the reasoning behind his decision." The layout is usually read as a Grand Tour conceit — an underground answer to the follies his neighbours were building above ground, with a nod to the Eleusinian mysteries. The club came later and, on the evidence, elsewhere. The Knights of St Francis of Wycombe grew out of Dashwood's earlier societies — the Society of Dilettanti (1733), for men who had travelled, and the Divan Club (1744), for those who had reached the Ottoman Empire. Dashwood had returned from Italy with a settled contempt for the Roman church and had himself painted by Knapton as "San Francesco di Wycombo", toasting a statue of Venus. For a meeting place he took the ruined Cistercian abbey at Medmenham, six miles away on the Thames, fitted it out with a cloister and a chapter room, and had the ceilings frescoed by Giuseppe Borgnis, brought from Italy in 1751. Over the door went the Rabelaisian motto "Fay ce que voudras". The members were not obscure. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty; the radical MP John Wilkes; the satirist Charles Churchill; George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe; Thomas Potter, an archbishop's disinherited son; the poet Paul Whitehead as steward; Dr Benjamin Bates; the three Vansittart brothers. Wilkes himself described the point of it plainly: "a set of worthy, jolly fellows, happy disciples of Venus and Bacchus", who "got occasionally together to celebrate woman in wine". A 1779 book, Nocturnal Revels, recorded the house rules — every member might bring "a Lady of a cheerful lively disposition", and "no indelicacy or indecency is allowed to be intruded without a severe penalty". It ended quietly. John Tucker, MP for Weymouth, was still angling for an invitation in August 1764; by 22 March 1766 he wrote that he had gone to Medmenham "and to my amazement found the Chapter Room stripped naked". When Whitehead died the club's entire estate was inventoried on 15 October 1774: some wine, 29 pewter plates, 27 knives, 29 forks and 24 wine glasses. Meanwhile Dashwood — by then Lord Le Despencer — was hosting Benjamin Franklin at West Wycombe, where the two men worked on an abridged Book of Common Prayer, and Franklin wrote to his son on 3 August 1773 that he was "in this House as much at my Ease as if it was my own, and the Gardens are a Paradise".

The caves are open to the public and are run commercially — but not by the National Trust, which is the commonest mistake. West Wycombe Park was gifted to the Trust in 1943 by Sir John Dashwood, and the house and grounds are a separate visit; the caves are operated by Hellfire Enterprises within the West Wycombe Estate, and National Trust membership gets you the concession rate, not free entry. The entrance is on Church Lane, West Wycombe, HP14 3AH. There is very little parking there; the 200-space car park is at Chorley Road, HP14 3AP, about five minutes' walk away. Admission in 2026 is £9.50 for adults, £8.00 for under-16s and concessions (students, OAPs, National Trust members, Blue Light card holders and armed forces), £21.00 for a three-person family and £30.00 for a four-person family, all of which must include a child under 16; under-2s are free. Tickets are non-refundable. Opening hours change through the year and the operator's own notices overlap, so check before travelling. As published for 2026: weekends only from January until Easter, 10:00–16:00, plus daily opening for February half term (14–22 February); daily 10:00–16:00 from 30 March to 4 October; and from Easter, weekdays 10:00–16:00 with weekends to 17:00. Last admission to the caves is 30 minutes before closing. Private guides and candlelit tours are bookable separately, and groups of 20 or more should phone ahead on 01494 533739. Practical warnings, in the operator's own words: the caves are in places "steep, narrow, slippery and dark", floors are uneven and some ceilings are low. Appropriate footwear is required, running is not allowed, children must be accompanied, and anyone prone to dizzy spells, faints, blackouts or loss of balance is told not to enter. The tunnels are unheated chalk and stay cool and damp whatever the weather outside, so take a layer. They are not wheelchair or pushchair accessible because of the width of the passages, though pushchair parking and baby slings are provided. Dogs are not allowed in the caves or the café, only in the courtyard. The Walled Garden café can be visited without a cave ticket. St Lawrence's church with its golden ball, and the Dashwood mausoleum where Paul Whitehead's heart was kept, are on the hill directly above the entrance.