page_title: Hellfire Caves
section_title: Hellfire Club
hierarchical_section_title: Hellfire Caves / History / Hellfire Club
context_page_description: The Hellfire Caves are a network of man-made chalk and flint caverns which extend 0.25 miles underground. They are situated above the village of West Wycombe, at the southern edge of the Chiltern Hills near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, Southeast England.
  They were excavated between 1748 and 1752 for Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer, founder of the Dilettanti Society and co-founder of the Hellfire Club, whose meetings were held in the caves. The caves have been operating as a tourist attraction since 1863
context_section_description: Members of a club founded by Sir Francis Dashwood included various politically and socially important 18th-century figures such as William Hogarth, John Wilkes, Thomas Potter and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. Though not believed to have been a member, Benjamin Franklin was a close friend of Dashwood who visited the caves on more than one occasion. The Hellfire Club had previously used Medmenham Abbey, eight miles (13 km) from West Wycombe on the River Thames, as a meeting place, but the caves at West Wycombe were used for meetings in the 1750s and early 1760s. The club motto was Fais ce que tu voudras ("Do what thou wilt"), and club activities included "numerous illicit activities including sex parties, drinking, wenching, and mock rituals" according to a summary provided by Ancient Origins.
  According to Horace Walpole, the members' "practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighbourhood of the complexion of those hermits."
  While it was still operating, Sir Francis' group was not known as the Hellfire Club - this name was given much later. His club used other names, such as The Brotherhood of St. Francis of Wycombe, Order of Knights of West Wycombe, and The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of West Wycombe.
  Meetings occurred twice a month, with an AGM lasting a week or more in June or September. Many rumours of black magic, satanic rituals and orgies were in circulation during the life of the club.
  By the early 1760s, the club was no longer very active and it was dissolved by 1766. A local legend claims that the caves are haunted by Sukie, a young maid who was accidentally killed by people playing a practical joke on her. Others claim that the ghost of Paul Whitehead, the former steward of the Hell Fire Club, has been seen in the caves.
caption: Portrait of Sir Francis Dashwood, the founder of the Knights of St Francis of Wycombe, a private members club which later became known as the notorious Hellfire Club, c. 1750
exif: {}