Hunting for Hellfire by Maggie Brookes

 I felt as though I'd inadvertently stirred a hornet's nest when an Instagram / Facebook post I made about a chance visit to West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire was viewed more than 22,000 times. Some of the comments made me itch to investigate further.

My original post said, 'West Wycombe looks like a quiet English village until you spot the bizarre ball on top of the church tower, the Hellfire caves and the extraordinary mausoleum for the Dashwood family. They were all constructed in the mid-18th century by Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Dilettanti Society and co-founder of the Hellfire Club.' I suspect it was the hashtag '#hellfire club' which created the viewing frenzy. (Note to self ­– write a novel abut a licentious secret society!)

Fraser Whitelock of High Wycombe responded first: 'St Lawrence's was built on top of the hill, on a pagan site. Later extended and a crypt added said to be an exact recreation of Syrian Sun Temple. The Golden Ball was used as a messaging system using the sun's reflection, linked through buildings such as Crystal Palace, through line of site, (sic) linked across the channel to Paris.  The Hellfire Caves were dug to access underground water systems, the re routed to help flood and create the lakes in Dashwood's grounds, so he could stage epic battles between Spanish galleons he had transported to West Wycombe village.'

Anthony Mealing, also from High Wycombe and a Listed Building Consultant at Garret McKee Architects responded: 'The Dashwoods had two Spanish Galleons transported to West Wycombe, and rebuilt them for battle reinactment (sic) on his lake. Spanish galleons were being taken in Barbados by privateers, and pirates. Also although it is told that locals dug the tunnels, it was actually Cornish workers. The obvious connections between pirates, Cornwall, mining, and overwhelming Masonic connections in the village. Stokes the fire a little more.'

Fraser Whitelock came back: 'I used to knock around the village as a teenager.  The tunnels in the High Street exist. I've seen them.  Used to dare each other to go in them.  No one did....  Don't get me started on Templar history in Wycombe.....'

Head spinning, I set out to see what I could discover. 

The National Trust told me that there was indeed an Iron Age ('pagan') settlement on the hill, dating from the 4th or 5th century BC, and later, the Saxon village of Hæferingdune or Haveringdon. Sadly its population was decimated by the Black Death in the 1340s, and those who remained moved down into the valley to the current village, named West Wycombe. The medieval church of St Lawrence remained on the hill. 

Then, in 1723, the 15-year-old Sir Francis Dashwood inherited his father's estates and Baronetcy. As a young man he did the Grand Tour and developed a taste for classical art and architecture, and a reputation for wild behaviour.  In the 1730's he started the Society of Dilletanti, which his political enemy Horace Walpole said was a 'club for which the nominal qualification is having been to Italy, and the real one, being drunk.' Later Sir Francis founded the Divan Club, for men who had visited the Ottoman Empire. He liked to dress up. This painting was made in his Divan Club outfit.

He seems to have begun the excavation of the 'hellfire caves' to quarry chalk for a new road, and give employment to local men who had suffered three successive bad harvests. A long winding tunnel runs a quarter of a mile into the hill, with many passages and chambers leading off it, including a Banqueting Hall. The caves are said to be the largest man-made chalk cavern in the world.  The 'Inner Chamber' is reputed to lie directly under St Lawrence church, signifying heaven and hell.

Sir Francis continued to love founding questionable 'dining clubs'. The one which is now known as the Hellfire Club, wasn't called that by him.  He called it the Order of Knights of West Wycombe, or The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of West Wycombe. Not such a catchy hashtag! This painting of him by Hogarth shows him as 'St Francis' worshipping a naked Venus.

Members of the not-called-the-hellfire-club may have included important 18th-century figures including William Hogarth, John Wilkes, Thomas Potter and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, though no papers about the club survive. Benjamin Franklin was a close friend of Sir Francis who visited the caves on more than one occasion. The club motto is popularly believed to have been a quote from Rableais: 'Fais ce que tu voudras' (Do what thou wilt).

Horace Walpole (who we have to remember was the author of the first Gothic novel, as well as Sir Francis' political rival) wrote this, about meetings at Medmenham Abbey on the Thames, also owned by Sir Francis: 'Its 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.'

The 'inner temple' of the Hellfire Caves.

But Sir Francis was more than a hell-raiser. He spent most of his life extending and converting the Queen Anne house at West Wycombe into a Palladian mansion with landscaped grounds full of follies. He bought pictures, sculptures and books. In 1732 alone, he purchased over £2700 in books from a bookseller in Amsterdam. 

In the 1750s he had the tower of St Lawrence's Church raised and crowned with an 8 ft wooden ball covered in gold leaf, possibly inspired by the Dogana in Venice. 

Dogana Da Mar, Venice

Various sources say the West Wycombe ball contains seating for six to 10 people. It was described by the author John Wilkes as 'the best globe tavern I was ever in'. 

Back to the comments about the golden ball on my Facebook post:

Craig Jay said 'I remember as a child you could climb the steps into it. I believed it to be a small card room for a select group of hellfire club members to illicitly gamble. Did the earl of sandwich bring a packed lunch?'

Adela Hollingsworth replied 'My mum went inside it when she was a child but it hasn’t been open to the public to enter for years.' 

 Sarah HR wrote: 'There are seats inside and they looked used to me when I looked into it 55 years ago.'

St Lawrence's church, West Wycombe

What about the signalling from the ball? A book about the Dashwoods published in 1987 reports a suggestion that Sir Francis Dashwood used a heliograph to signal through a porthole in the golden ball to his friend, John Norris (1721–1786), who had erected a tower, now known as the Camberley Obelisk, near his home at Hawley, Hampshire, 21 miles to the south. I haven't been able to find any evidence that signals continued across the Channel, and of course the Crystal Palace wasn't built till 1851, but it's a good story, and I love a good story.

The inside of the church was also remodelled in a classical mode, though perhaps not based on a temple at Palmyra. The painted ceiling, by Borgnis, was apparently an adaptation of Robert Wood’s drawings of the Temple of the Sun at Balbec. 

I also failed to find evidence of the two Spanish galleons, though the National Trust says that Sir Francis kept a frigate on the lake, using it to re-enact sea battles as entertainment for guests. Cannonballs dredged from the lake are on display in the house.

Not wanting to be forgotten, Sir Francis also built the Grade One listed  Dashwood Mausoleum on the edge of the hill.

In true Dashwood style, there’s an urn containing the heart of the poet Paul Whitehead, steward of one of Sir Francis's 'clubs'.  In the centre stands a pedestal and urn dedicated to his wife Lady le Despenser, who must have been a long-suffering woman. 

Unsurprisingly, the house and gardens have featured in many TV dramas and films, including Downton Abbey, The Crown, Bridgerton, Belgravia, adaptations of Daniel Deronda, Cranford, Little Dorrit and Howards End, episodes of Endeavour and Foyles War and movies A Clockwork Orange, The Duchess, I Capture the Castle, Bridget Jones' Baby and the one Sir Francis might have loved the most, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  

Alongside his secret societies and his collecting, Sir Francis was a politician, who became the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then the 11th Baron le Despencer, Postmaster General and finally the Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. 

I wondered where Sir Francis got the money to do all his renovations, rebuilds and to fund his wild parties? His father and uncle were successful merchants, who served on the board of directors for both the Royal African Company and the East India Company. As such, their investments were deeply implicated in Britain’s international slave trade. Although we don't know if Sir Francis owned enslaved people, his grandson received government compensation for emancipation of slaves.

 Back on my Facebook feed, Anthony Mealing wrote ' The Dashwoods were slave owners up until 1835 with the end of Empire Slavery (the empire territories) when they received government compensation for emancipation of slaves on three plantations they then had an interest in, Barbados Spring Plantation 161 Enslaved, Barbados Over Hill Plantation 109 Enslaved, Barbados Ashton Hall Plantation 83 Enslaved... From the UCL records.'

What about the link to the Knights Templar? A medieval manor house in what is now High Wycombe known as Temple Wycombe was owned by the Knights Templar from 1227. When they were dissolved it passed to the Knights Hospitallers, who held it until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Of course this was long before the Dashwoods of West Wycombe. A branch of Morrisons now stands on the site.

 Finally there's a mysterious comment from Robert Fox: 'Not forgetting the praying wall in the High Street, where you can see where people have knelt.'

So far my searches haven't turned up any other mention of this wall. I guess I'll have to return and take a look. If I dare.

Maggie Brookes, novelist and poet. Author of  historical novels The Prisoner's Wife and Acts of Love and War. As Maggie Brookes-Butt: Wish, New and Selected Poems.

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Further reading about Sir Francis:  https://www.artandthecountryhouse.com/essays/essays-index/sir-francis-dashwood-connoisseur-collector-and-traveller   Jason M. Kelly is Director of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute and Professor of History in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.