Last reviewed 16 October 2026 · A three-minute read · 31–now
High Wycombe's record here centres on West Wycombe Hill, where an Iron Age camp and Roman-era activity gave way, in the 1740s, to Sir Francis Dashwood's chalk mine and the secretive Hellfire Club, before the tunnels reopened as a show cave in 1951.
The short answer
The Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe, United Kingdom, began as a hand-dug chalk mine, paid for by Sir Francis Dashwood between 1748 and 1752 to give work to farmhands after three failed harvests. The chalk built a road; the tunnels later housed Dashwood's secretive Hellfire Club before reopening as a show cave in 1951.
Entrance to the Hellfire Caves, July 1979 — 1979 · Jeff Buck · CC BY-SA 2.0
1748 to 1752
Starving farmhands hand-dug the chalk that became these caves
The Hellfire Caves are a show cave today, a quarter mile of chalk and flint tunnels running back into West Wycombe Hill. People pay to walk them with a candle or a flashlight, past chambers with names like the Banqueting Hall and the Inner Temple. The entrance arch, built from flint in a Gothic style, still frames the hillside the way it did when it was new.
The Hellfire Caves started as a jobs project. In the late 1740s, three harvests in a row failed around West Wycombe, and local farm workers went hungry. Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet (11th Baron le Despencer), the local landowner, paid them a shilling a day to dig chalk out of the hillside by hand. The chalk built a new road to High Wycombe. The digging left behind these tunnels, hollowed room by room, the pick marks still visible on the walls.
Dashwood had bigger plans for the space he'd made. He had already founded a secret society in 1746, later nicknamed the Hellfire Club. Around 1750, its meetings moved into these caves, twice a month, with longer gatherings once a year. Members included the painter William Hogarth, the politician John Wilkes, and John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Horace Walpole called their practice "rigorously pagan," devoted to Bacchus and Venus. The group walked all the way to the Inner Temple chamber, 300 feet under the church that Dashwood had also rebuilt on the hilltop above.
1762 to 1774
Dashwood scrubbed away evidence of his own secret club
By the early 1760s the club had quietly stopped meeting. Church records put its end around 1763. Dashwood himself scrubbed the evidence, pulling prints and member name tags out of the caves in 1766. What the sources describe is drinking, banqueting, hired women, and mock religious ceremonies poking fun at the Church. The club's own name for itself wasn't "Hellfire Club" at all. Members called it the Order of the Knights of St Francis, or the Brotherhood of Sir Francis of Wycombe. London newspapers hung the "Hellfire" name on it later, and it stuck.
Paul Whitehead, the club's secretary, died in 1774. He left instructions that his heart be cut out, placed in a marble urn costing fifty pounds, and kept in the Dashwood family mausoleum on the hilltop, a short walk from the cave entrance. For decades it sat there, a relic of the club's secrecy on open display.
1781 to 1829
The caves decayed after Dashwood's death, then a heart was stolen
Dashwood died in 1781, and the caves fell into disrepair without him. Nobody maintained the tunnels, and the chalk chambers that had hosted banquets and mock ceremonies sat empty. In 1829, an Australian soldier stole Whitehead's heart from its urn in the mausoleum. The theft fed the ghost stories that tourism promoters later built around the site, including one about Paul Whitehead's restless spirit still walking the caves.
Local legend also tells of a young woman, sometimes called Sukie, lured into the caves by jealous men with a forged letter claiming to be from a suitor. One version says she arrived expecting a wedding and was stoned to death. Another, told on the village's own website, has her realizing the trick and throwing stones back at the men who played it. Guides still tell both versions. Neither is history, but both are part of what visitors hear underground.
1940s to 1951
A wartime shelter plan gave way to paid tours
During the Second World War, someone drew up plans to use the caves as an air-raid shelter. West Wycombe was too rural a target for German bombers, and the plans were never carried out.
In 1949, Sir Francis Dashwood, the 11th Baronet, visited Carlsbad Caverns in the United States and saw the crowds paying to tour them. Sir Francis Dashwood came home, stabilized the old passages, and reopened the Hellfire Caves to the public in 1951. Visitors paid a shilling a head, and candles were handed out free at the entrance.
2023 to now
The cave entrance became a castle for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The caves reopened to millions of visitors since then, more than two and a half million by one count. Filmmakers have used the entrance too. In 2023, crews shot scenes here for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, with the Gothic flint arch standing in for a castle in Transylvania, and a funeral scene filmed nearby.
More recently, Sir Edward Dashwood and his daughter Victoria have steered the attraction toward family visitors, moving it away from its old reputation for adult-themed events. The tunnels that once held a secret club's banquets now run tours for children and tourists with flashlights, past the Banqueting Hall, the River Styx, and down to the Inner Temple, still 300 feet beneath the church on the hill.
The flint Gothic archway still frames the tunnel mouth, open to paying visitors where it once hid a secret club.
Read the ground you are standing on
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and Strata will dig the ground under your feet instead, wherever that is, in about a minute, with every source shown.
Sourced records, high and medium confidence. Era background is marked as such.
Deep time
The hill itself is White Chalk Subgroup limestone laid down in a warm sea between about 100 and 66 million years ago, soft enough that Dashwood's workers could cut it by hand.
Era background — not a record of this tile · Macrostrat
Ancient
The Camp on Church Hill nearby is recorded as a hillfort and now protected as a scheduled monument, one of the oldest human works near this ground.
Radiocarbon samples from the Camp on Church Hill, a few hundred meters off, date activity here to between roughly AD 31 and AD 877, long before Dashwood's tunnels.
Sir Francis Dashwood paid local villagers a shilling a day to hand-dig these chalk tunnels between 1748 and 1752, after three failed harvests had left them with no other work.
From the 1750s into the early 1760s, Sir Francis Dashwood's club of politicians, writers and aristocrats held its gatherings in the Inner Temple chamber, directly beneath St Lawrence's Church.
Dashwood rebuilt St Lawrence's Church in 1751, positioned so the Inner Temple chamber lies roughly 90 meters beneath its floor, a deliberate heaven-and-hell arrangement.
The club's one attempt at a big ceremonial meeting, held on Walpurgis Night 1752, was judged a failure and no large meeting of this kind was held there again.
Church records suggest the Hellfire Club broke up by 1763, and by 1766 Dashwood had removed the prints and name tags that marked the caves as its meeting place.
The club's secretary, Paul Whitehead, died in 1774 and willed his heart to Dashwood in a marble urn in the Dashwood Mausoleum above the caves; the urn was stolen in 1829.
During the Second World War officials considered using the caves as an air-raid shelter, but the rural area was never a German bombing target and the plan went nowhere.
Sir Francis Dashwood, 11th Baronet, visited Carlsbad Caverns in America, was struck by its tourist numbers, and in 1951 reopened the Hellfire Caves to the public for a shilling a head.
In 2023 the entrance to the Hellfire Caves was filmed for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, standing in as the entrance to Bran Castle, with a funeral scene shot nearby.
The hillside held no caves at all before 1748; the tunnels were created by local farm workers hand-digging chalk for Sir Francis Dashwood between 1748 and 1752, after three failed harvests left them without other work.
What happened at the Hellfire Caves under Sir Francis Dashwood?
Dashwood's secret society, later nicknamed the Hellfire Club, met in the caves from around 1750 into the early 1760s, gathering in the Inner Temple chamber roughly 90 metres beneath St Lawrence's Church for drinking, banqueting and mock religious ceremonies.
Why are the Hellfire Caves called that?
Members called their own group the Order of the Knights of St Francis or the Brotherhood of Sir Francis of Wycombe; London newspapers later attached the name 'Hellfire Club' to it, and the nickname stuck to the caves themselves.
When did the Hellfire Caves reopen to the public?
Sir Francis Dashwood, the 11th Baronet, reopened the caves to visitors in 1951, charging a shilling a head, after visiting Carlsbad Caverns in the United States and seeing the crowds it drew.
What happened to Paul Whitehead's heart?
Paul Whitehead, the Hellfire Club's secretary, died in 1774 and left his heart in a marble urn in the Dashwood Mausoleum above the caves; the urn was stolen by an Australian soldier in 1829.
Have the Hellfire Caves appeared in film?
In 2023 the Gothic flint entrance to the Hellfire Caves was used in filming for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, standing in as the entrance to Bran Castle, with a funeral scene shot nearby.
