West Wycombe caves are a series of long winding passages lead deep underground for over half a mile, open to visitors throughout the year they were built in the 18th Century as part of a job creation scheme by the Earl of Dashwood of nearby West Wycombe Park and were subsequently used by the notorious Hell-Fire Club.
Church Lane, West Wycombe, HP14 3AP.
www.hellfirecaves.co.uk
Amenities
The tunnels have a complex set of opening hours that change though out the year but they are open every weekend between 11:00 am and 5:30 pm or dusk and weekdays during Buckinghamshire School holidays.
Due to the nature of the caves and the width of the tunnels, the Hellfire Caves are unsuitable for pushchairs and wheelchairs. All visitors can enjoy the tea rooms, gift shop and the courtyard at the entrance to the Caves.
There is very limited parking at The Hellfire Caves but ample parking at West Wycombe Garden Centre just a short distance from the Caves, the postcode for directions to the Garden Centre car park is HP14 3AP.
History
There had long been an open-cast quarry on the side of the hill for mining chalk for the foundations of houses in the village and for roads. However the tunnels that we enjoy today were created by one of the first Job Creation Schemes
Sir Francis, the 2nd Baronet, set about extending the quarry in the mid 1700’s order to relieve serious local unemployment caused by three successive harvest failures.
The project was very much in keeping with the proposals which Sir Francis had already introduced into Parliament during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer for stimulating the creation of work to relieve rural unemployment.
However, nobody is entirely sure of the reasoning behind his decision to dig a long winding tunnel a quarter of a mile into the hill with all sorts of chambers and divided passages leading off it and a huge room half way down. One can only presume it was an element of mischief and a fun project to undertake. The design is clearly symbolic and is thought to have something to do with the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece. He was no doubt inspired by his travels on his Grand Tour when he would have visited other similar caverns and tunnels.
Follies and artificial caves were fashionable – Horace Walpole had built a cave at his London house, Strawberry Hill, and had purloined some stalactites from the natural caves at Wookey Hole in Somerset, and there were many other examples such as those at Stourhead and Stowe – but Sir Francis’s artificial cave is the largest and most curious of all.
Restoration
Sir Francis formally re-opened the Caves in 1951 at a charge of one shilling, with candles provided free. A wave of publicity ensued and visitors started to roll in, especially when the local vicar, Father Allen, told the Daily Mirror that ‘my tummy wobbles like a jelly every time I pass the entrance.’ He followed this with a sermon denouncing the evil influence which emanated from the Caves. Sir Francis took exactly the opposite view. If there was any evil in the Caves, he felt it would soon evaporate when the place was subjected to the eyes of crowds of sceptical visitors; the worst solution was to bottle it all up by keeping the Caves shut and lending credibility to such stories.
At weekends, debutantes who had come to stay often helped by selling soft drinks at the entrance, and by the end of that first summer nearly 10,000 visitors had paid their shilling and the Caves had made a tiny profit. The following year much work was done to improve the Caves and various surveys carried out, particularly in the Banqueting Hall which was considered unsafe at the time due to the danger of falling of chalk. Each came up with conflicting advice until an engineer from Yorkshire advised digging a new tunnel by hand, bypassing the Great Hall. An advertisement in the local newspaper produced an ex-Sapper, Jim Powney, who had been with the Guards Armoured Division. Jim agreed to come and work at nights and at weekends with another friend, Les Lawrence, and to dig out a tunnel 150 feet long by hand for £350, in order to bypass the Great Hall which was clearly the main danger.
Jim and Les took about four months to dig out the tunnel, depositing all the chalk in the Great Hall and raising the floor level by four or five feet. Sir Francis used to help too at weekends, although using a pick was hard work. After the tunnel was finished, Jim and Les erected pit props all the way down the Caves wherever they were needed. Electric lighting was installed, the wooden pit props were replaced over the years with steel ones or brick tunneling an elegant cafe was erected at the entrance, designed by Guy Shepherd who had previously designed Schweppes Grotto for the Festival of Britain Fun Fair at Battersea. Waxwork scenes were erected and a commentary installed with sound effects. Although rudimentary by today’s standards it was in fact the very first underground ‘sound and vision’ programme in the world.
Work was then undertaken to make the Banqueting Hall completely safe. The solution was to drill holes 130 feet down from the top of the hill into the Great Hall. Wire ropes were to be lowered down these boreholes and attached to a protective steel canopy which was to be hoisted up to the ceiling. Then 300 stainless steel bolts 10 to 15 feet long and with large plates at the end were drilled into the chalk ceiling and walls to make the chamber absolutely safe.
www.hellfirecaves.co.uk
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