We were halfway up a hill in Buckinghamshire near High Wycombe, in the unexpected intense heat, climbing through a steep meadow. After a steep walk we emerged from the green and above us rose the flinty face of a vast mausoleum, the glinting dome of a church behind. But after a steep and slightly grumpy climb, thanks to a lack of signposts, we began a reluctant descent, through what suddenly became scrub and bushes. A sharp turn and there it was, a grand stone entrance built into the hillside itself, surrounded by tables with sun brollies, and tired looking people in shorts and summer dresses taking a breather. This was the grand entrance to a network of man-made tunnels: the Hellfire Caves. It’s a slightly absurd spot to be the HQ of Georgian debauchery, but then who would have that any other way?
The caves had been excavated in the mid-1700s, at the whim of Francis Dashwood – that exellent combo of postmaster general and rake – who lived in nearby West Wycombe Park. Dashwood had founded the Society of Dilettanti, a group of rich art-lovers who took Grand Tours of Europe cooing over – and occasionally nicking – classical antiquities. He was also a noted womaniser and drinker, and founded the Hellfire Club, whose aim was to dress up in campy monks outfits and get hammered.
The caves had been excavated for stone for the monuments built on the top of the hill – the mausoleum and the pimped church. And so Dashwood couldn’t resist the lure of the caves as the perfect locale for bad behaviour. They have been open as a tourist attraction since 1951, perhaps a Festival of Britain attraction celebrating the legacy of seedy aristos behaving badly.
I loved exploring the caves, especially its mannequins dressed in Georgian finery and bits of nylon net. It reminded me of my first visit to one of Buckingham’s other historic attractions, Bletchley Park before the Google money – but that’s another story.
Afterwards we left the cold and gloom and climbed the hill again in the bright sun, this time all the way to the top, to explore the magnificent monuments there, St Lawrence's Church and its mausoleum. What had been a medieval church had been converted into a Georgian monument by Dashwood, with a Venetian-style golden ball glinting in the sun at the top, part of a theatrical setting on the hilltop intended to be a handsome vista from the house, one step up from a ha-ha or a temple on a lake.
Below the church and its graveyard of falling stone crosses stands the vast form of the flint-walled mausoleum. This dramatic high point had been the site of an Iron Age hill fort, and once the mausoleum housed urns containing the ashes of the Dashwood family, but it’s a place that has been tomb raided over the years, with the sculptures from the alcoves all gone. As we sat there on the top of the hill looking out over the countryside below, even we weren’t at the top of this extraordinary layered landscape, as an aged blue Cessna circled overhead, serving sightseeing oneupmanship.
This is a place that feels more graphic novel than bucolic Bucks, a fantasia of theatrical effects and vistas built for maximum effect. No hellfire, but a lot of camp.
Motorways and Phone Boxes
I’ve had a couple of articles published in the last week. There’s one in the current edition of the Big Issue on the charms of motorway service stations. Please do buy a copy of this excellent mag. Here’s an extract:
What I really want with my motorway services is a bridge to nowhere. Back in 1959 the first two in Britain, at Watford Gap (some 67 miles from Watford, should you ever make that rookie error) and Newport Pagnell (name checked in The Smiths song Is It Really So Strange?), featured walk- ways across the road. They were merely a conduit to an identical building on the other side, and if you visit both – on outward and return journeys – it can feel like a very high-concept joke.
Then there was also an article in the Independent about KX100 BT phone boxes from the 1980s, where I was very lucky to interview author and uber-phone box geek Johny Pitts and Catherine Croft of the 20th Century Society. You can read it here.