Hellfire Caves

OVERVIEW

A quarter-mile of man-made chalk and flint passages running into West Wycombe Hill, ending in a chamber called the Inner Temple beneath the church of St Lawrence on the summit, across an underground stream named the Styx. Sir Francis Dashwood had them dug between 1748 and 1752 to give work to villagers after bad harvests, the chalk going to build the road to High Wycombe, and the Knights of St Francis — the Hellfire Club — met here and at Medmenham Abbey.

HISTORY

The club's members included the Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes, and Benjamin Franklin was Dashwood's guest; its reputation for mock-Catholic ritual and orgies was a scandal of the 1760s. Paul Whitehead, the club's steward and poet, left his heart in an urn to the Dashwood mausoleum on the hill; it was stolen in 1829. The caves reopened as an attraction in the 1950s.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The caves' own tradition names Sukie, a girl from the George and Dragon in the village lured into the caves by a prank and killed, and Paul Whitehead, looking for his heart. Visitors and staff report a figure in the passages and a woman in white; Most Haunted filmed here. The estate tells the stories and sells them.

VISITING

Open seasonally, ticketed; the church and mausoleum on the hill above are National Trust.