Building record 1323200000 - THE CAVE, WEST WYCOMBE

Grade II+. 1750-52. One of the landscape features of Sir Francis Dashwood's C18 scheme embracing park and hillsides. U shaped retaining walls of flint rubble forming entrance to manmade caves running for about ¼ of a mile under the hill. Yard partly obscured by modern wood hut occupying one third to ½ of yard area. Walls have gables and pinnacles, round and pointed arched niches. Pointed arched doorway to caves. Supposed scene of Hell-Fire Club meetings (B1).
Background research and detailed topographic survey carried out by English Heritage between April 2000 and June 2001. Successive harvest failures between 1748 and 1750 caused serious local unemployment in West Wycombe. Sir Francis Dashwood aimed to alleviate the hardship experienced as
a result of this by employing men to quarry chalk from Church Hill to use in foundations for a new main road between West Wycombe and High Wycombe. The mining was carried out between 1748 and 1752 so as to excavate a network of labyrinthine tunnels and caves running for c0.25 miles under Church Hill. A U-shaped retaining wall of flint rubble was constructed at the back of a large open courtyard with a gothic arched entrance
to the caves and a series of pointed niches. The whole was intended to be seen from WestWycombe House as an eye-catcher in the style of a gothic church. Although depicted on Richardson's map of 1767 the structure does not appear to be shown in its present form and may have been significantly altered at a later date. See report for detail (B2-B4).
Conservation management plan (B5).