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.

Instagram: Maggie __Brookes 

Facebook: Maggie Brookes-Butt

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. 

An insistent ghost by Fiona Dunbar

Our guest blogger this month is Fiona Dunbar, who is not actually a writer of historical fiction! But here she describes what happened when she became obsessed with an unlikely historical figure, who ended up appearing as a ghost in one of her Kitty Slade books. 

Fiona is a children's author and illustrator based in the United Kingdom. She was born in 1961 in Hemel Hempstead. She is the author of the Silk Sisters trilogies and Toon-Head. Her Lulu Baker trilogy was adapted to become a children's TV series called Jinx by Kindle Entertainment starring Amber Beattie; Jinx was first screened on CBBC in Autumn 2009.

Divine Freaks, the first of her new series featuring the character Kitty Slade was published in May 2011 and the second, Fire & Roses, was published in September 2011<sup>.

Welcome to the History Girls, Fiona!</sup>

Fiona Dunbar

How do you feel about putting words into the mouths of real historical figures? Do you find it harder than with made-up characters, or not really?

I ask because I was surprised to find myself doing this recently, when writing the second of my Kitty Slade books, Fire & Roses. I didn’t plan it, it just sort of happened, because in the course of my research I became fixated on one particular historical figure. Note that I do not use the term ‘falling in love’, in the way that Linda Buckley-Archer did when she blogged recently about preoccupation with a certain historical time or place.

Love this person? No way!

Like, even? Er, no.

Fascinated by him? Yup: definitely.

Utterly captivated. To the point where I teetered on the brink of writing a whole full-length adult novel, featuring him at the centre of it. Given that what I do is write 40,000-word books for children, featuring things like chameleon girls and magic recipe books, this might have brought a stony silence from my agent. You did what? Why?

So I had to, you know, rein it in a bit. Remember who I was writing for. Most 12-year-old girls don’t want to read about 18th Century politics – however stuffed with scandal and outrageous behaviour. And to be honest, I’m more than happy to leave the job of writing sophisticated historical novels to those who do it best. But…well, I was quite swept away, all the same.

So who was it that had this effect on me, and why?

John Wilkes, radical journalist and politician, twice Lord Mayor of London, wit, Hellfire Club member and sometime jailbird, referred to by King George III as ‘that devil Wilkes’.

It was my interest in the Hellfire Club that set me off down this route – an interest that goes back a long way (see my blog post here. Originally called The Knights of St Francis of Wycombe, the group was started in1748 by Buckinghamshire aristocrat Sir Francis Dashwood.

Portrait of Sir Francis Dashwood by Hogarth

It was not a Satanist group – that was a myth started up in the 19th Century – but a collection of politicians, poets and intellectuals, plus one artist (William Hogarth) with a taste for irreverent and licentious behaviour. Rabelais was their inspiration, and the Catholic Church was mercilessly mocked. The women who chose to attend did so anonymously; it is still not known who any of them were. All involved were sworn to secrecy as to the nature of the activities during the meetings, but one thing is clear: a lot of sex happened. Ahem. Well, since my typical reader is about twelve – and plenty are younger than that – I kind of skirt around that one. As it were.

Anyway: Wilkes. My initial interest in him specifically was sparked during a research visit to the Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe. More tunnels than caves, they were hollowed out to produce chalk for road-building; once excavation was completed, Dashwood hit on the idea of using the subterranean labyrinth as a party venue. The ‘infernal’ aspect was bigged up, and what you see now is a wonderfully eccentric and rather camp attraction, complete with Classical-era style statues, fake stalagmites and stalactites, and its own mini River Styx. Here and there are caverns peopled by dusty models of Hellfire members and their friends. I love it for its silliness, and its whiff of Hammer Horror (trivia! The Dashwood Mausoleum, on the hill above, did actually feature in one: To The Devil, A Daughter).

Wilkes is represented in a part of the caves called the Inner Temple. Models of him, Dashwood and others are gathered as if for a Hellfire Club shindig. A placard and a voiceover both tell the story of an incident in which Wilkes had dressed up a live baboon in devilish garb, and hid the poor creature in a cabinet. Quite how it was kept quiet in there I have no idea, but Wilkes is reputed to have released the baboon at one point during the evening, by way of concealed wiring connected to a spring-loaded device. The baboon leapt out of the cabinet and onto the shoulders of another member, Lord Sandwich. Sandwich, convinced that he was experiencing some sort of actual devilish manifestation, frantically repented of all his sins – much to the hilarity of Wilkes and the others.

There is some doubt as to the historical accuracy of this story, but no matter – I was hooked. I then read The Dashwoods of West Wycombe by Sir Francis Dashwood – a descendent of the 18th Century one. That gave me a useful overview of the Hellfire Club. It ought to have been enough for my purposes, but the more I found out, the more I wanted to know.

I researched further, on the Internet.

Will Self said that writers who use the Internet to research their subjects are idiots: while I understand what he means, I think this is a snobbish remark that ignores the fact that real treasures can be found there. Notorious though Wikipedia might be for its inaccuracies, it is nevertheless a fantastic starting point – you then go on and check your facts elsewhere. And IF I had been writing a detailed account of Wilkes’ life, for example, what better material could I have consulted than actual facsimiles of his political pamphlet, The North Briton?

It’s there, you can find it!

I became engrossed in the reasons for the ultimate breakup of the Hellfire Club – and Wilkes and The North Briton were at the centre of that. His pamphlet was massively supportive of William Pitt – who, much to Wilkes’ dismay, had recently resigned – while also subtly lobbing defamatory insinuations in the direction of Pitt’s replacement, Lord Bute, other prominent Scots, and the Scots in general (and I’ve always been interested in the Jacobite rebellions, so that was another cue for me to get totally sidetracked …)

Clearly, Wilkes wound a lot of people up – not least my idol, William Hogarth. But what precisely caused Hogarth to publish a portrait of him like this?

Wilkes was as famed for his odd appearance as he was for his wit and charm: ‘It takes just half an hour for me to talk away my face’, he would say. Still, this depiction is clearly an exaggeration: the squinting eyes and heavy jaw, the leering grin…and the wig fashioned into devilish horns.

Why did Hogarth hate him so much?

To find out, I bought a copy of Jenny Uglow’s biography, Hogarth (a cracking read, by the way, and indispensable for any fan of the man’s work). Yes, I was really overdoing it now; no, I couldn’t help it.

The portrait was preceded by some considerable provocation on both sides. As Uglow says, “Wilkes, who so enjoyed fighting, was a dangerous person to annoy. Few would willingly enter the ring against him.” And yet Hogarth, who was pro-Bute, did a brave but probably foolhardy thing: he published his print The Times, Plate 1 (1762):

There’s an awful lot going on here, but the relevant parts to note are the flaming globe on the right, fanned by Pitt on stilts, while a fireman figure representing the king attempts to put the fire out. Two figures on the top floor of the ‘Temple Coffee House’ direct their jets at the king instead of the fire: these were known to represent Wilkes and his friend, poet Charles Churchill.

Well, Wilkes lashed out: the whole of the next edition of The North Briton was devoted to attacking Hogarth. This could have looked like nothing more than spite, but as Uglow tells us: ‘there was enough truth here to hurt, and hurt badly.’

And so it went on, with Hogarth producing another print featuring Wilkes in an unflattering way. Wilkes fought back, etc, etc… Eventually, Wilkes was imprisoned in the Tower for ‘seditious libel’ in his North Briton tirades. He was hugely popular, however, having become something of a free speech hero; he was soon freed. Hogarth wasn’t impressed, though: his portrait of Wilkes appeared the following year.

I was fascinated. Every time I told myself I really had to get on and write that children’s book, I managed to sneak in just one more peak at a page about the Seven Years’ War, or Wilkes’ notorious annotated Essay on Woman, a parody of Pope’s Essay on Man, or his assorted other rivalries…

In the end, I had to step back, take stock, boil everything down to the barest essentials. So, what did I end up with?

I had thought I might involve Hogarth in my story, but then decided that would be too complicated. I did still need an adversary for Wilkes, though. Who should it be? God knows, there were enough of them. But in the end, I made up my own. I took elements of Lord Sandwich and William Hogarth, put them together and created Sir Ambrose Vyner. I should explain that Vyner and Wilkes appear in my story in ghost form – the story is set in the present day. Wilkes is unique among the ghosts in my series so far, not only in that he’s a real historical figure, but also because he doesn’t exactly have unfinished business; he just likes to make mischief.

Vyner’s unfinished business was to get even with Wilkes, but he doesn’t actually feature much in the story; it is Wilkes that takes centre stage. And putting words into the mouth of an historical character felt like an audacious thing to do, for an inexperienced historian like me. I think – I hope – I have come up with a plausible voice. I certainly had fun writing him.

Two things I learned: I couldn’t have Wilkes refer to ‘the Prime Minister’, because that moniker had yet to be bestowed on the head of the government. The history books refer to Prime Ministers going back to Walpole, but it is a retrospective term. No doubt you all knew that, but I didn’t. Secondly, when Sir Ambrose finally appears, he denounces Wilkes for being, as we might put it today, full of shit. The word ‘piffle’ sprang to mind – no doubt influenced by the sort of language Boris Johnson uses (‘an inverted pyramid of piffle’ is a favourite of mine). But Sir Ambrose died in 1769, and the earliest recorded use of the word ‘piffle’ as a noun dates from 1890. Even the verb goes no further back than 1847. This rather surprised me; I thought it sounded quite Shakespearean. So, no piffle. Instead I have Sir Ambrose say the Wilkes is ‘all bluster and perfidious trifle.’ I hope there aren’t any overlooked anachronisms; if so, I’ll trust the History Girls to let me know.

Will I write another historical figure into one of my stories? No plans to at the moment. But if one sneaks up on me, I might not be able to hold back!






Many thanks for this post and I think Fiona might just have suggested another theme for the History Girls. How about more ghosts in December?