The Franklin Files

Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781), later Lord Le Despencer, was the founder of the best known Hell-Fire Club of Britain. But the club never called itself Hell-Fire Club, they called themselves Knights of St. Francis (after Francis Dashwood), The Order of Knights of West Wycombe or Monks of Medmenham. The club is often mentioned as the first Hell-Fire Club, which is not true either. To be precise it was one of several such clubs and rather moderate, nothing special at all.

What made them special was something else: many members of the club were from famous families, the club was a who is who of the 18th century society. One still famous member was Lord Sandwich, who gave name to the snack. It is said, that he was too busy playing cards, so he instructed his servants to slap some meat between two hunks of bread. The names of the others mean little today, but they were well known in the 18th century and so the club had some prominence then.

Hell-Fire clubs were notorious, thought to be the home of sexual rites, orgies, abuse of alcohol, hedonism, satanism, freemasonry, and the worst of all: free thought! All in all, much of it is probably true, but Satanic goings-on and Black Masses are most likely the product of imaginative fantasy. From todays point of view, where swinger clubs, rave parties and hard rock concerts are rather common, the 18th century bigotry seems rather naive.

Probably to be safe from witnesses or because of the strange atmosphere, Sir Francis Dashwood used the former chalk quarries of West Wycombe for meetings of his club. He enlarged them, which gave work to numerous men and produced enough chalk to build a road. The Monks of Medmenham doubtlessly held wild parties here, but it's doubtful that they ever did any more than that. The caves are cold, dank and damp and not very comfortable for orgies.

The chalk quarries existed for a long time, when Dashwood enlarged them. They are said to be of prehistoric origin, but this is most likely an exaggeration. It is possible though, as prehistoric flint mines are known from other places in Europe. The chalk contains a lot of flint, typically forming a sort of dark layers in the soft white chalk. The soft chalk made the mining easy, even for stone age tools. But because of the heavy alterations by Dashwood, all older remains seem to be destroyed.

The flint of the area was used to build several buildings at West Wycombe. The entrance to the caves consists completely of this rock. Also the St Lawrence's church, which is located exactly above the Inner Temple of the caves, is built of this rock.