Like many others, I took my summer holiday in Britain this year instead of heading off abroad, and this gave me the chance to explore some of the beautiful countryside that England has to offer. On an August Sunday morning, having spent the night at a comfortable travellers’ hotel beside the A40, I was getting some air taking a stroll around the pretty village of nearby West Wycombe when I came across the Hell-Fire Caves. Set at the bottom of a hill, their tea room was open and a number of people were emerging from the entrance after exploring the man-made cavern set behind the umbrella-shaded tables and benches. After a welcome cup of tea and some cake I had become sufficiently intrigued to want to take a look inside these caves myself.

Googling the Hell-Fire Caves on my smartphone gave me an inkling of why they had been built and introduced me to Sir Francis Dashwood for the first time. I read that he, as the local landowner, had caused the tunnels and chambers to be dug so as to create some employment for his tenants at a time when there had been a serious lack of local work. The reason for this need had been that three successive harvests had failed between 1748 and 1750. The stone, hacked from the hillside tunnels, had then been used to create the surface of a new main road running between West Wycombe and High Wycombe, thus creating a useful infrastructure project for the area. But there was another use for the caves that had now been created as Dashwood, who was co-founder of the notorious Hell-Fire Club and one of the founders of the Dilettanti Society, had furnished himself with an unusual venue in which he could hold meetings of his private circle.

With my mobile phone in my hand I then opened up TheGenealogist.co.uk website as I wanted to see what else I could discover by using one of the latest features of TheGenealogist’s excellent Map Explorer tool. This very useful map interface allows you to travel back in time and see how an area has changed over the years. With its ‘Locate Me’ function, when used on a mobile phone, it can unlock the history of what is around you as you explore an area. In this case, having gone down into the caves and returned to the entrance, I wanted to see if I could find the caves, but you may be looking at another type of building and wonder who its owners and occupiers were. With the addition of the georeferenced tithe map layer to Map Explorer, users can now see the lie of the land from early Victorian times through the period around the end of the 19th century and on to modern times. The application provided by TheGenealogist for its subscribers to explore their ancestors’ area makes use of various maps from the historical tithe and Ordnance Survey maps all the way up to present day street maps and satellite maps. These will show the same point georeferenced on each plan, and by using the opacity controls we can fade up and down each map layer to see how the land developed.

Scrolling around the map open in Map Explorer on my smartphone, I noticed that the hill into which the tunnels had been cut contained a church on its crest, as well as a mausoleum. Selecting the Victorian tithe map and opening plots as indicated by the red pins, I could see that as well as the land on which the hill stood most of the village settlement at its foot had been owned in the 19th century by Sir George Henry Dashwood MP, the 5th Baronet. This gentleman would have been the descendant of the pleasure-seeking 2nd Baronet who had enjoyed a notorious reputation for drinking but also had caused the caves to be excavated, built the road, refurbished the church and put up the mausoleum.

Walking up the steep hill I then came across the monument to the Dashwood dead that I had seen on the map. It was an unroofed hexagonal structure, formed by a series of linked triumphal arches. As I am someone who is always fascinated by history, wherever it catches my attention, I found out from a quick Google search that this was also the work of Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Le Despencer, 2nd Baronet (1708–81). It would seem that between 1751 and 1763 Sir Francis Dashwood had been undertaking the rebuilding of St Lawrence, the church on the crest of this hill. Not very piously, he had placed on the top of the tower a great gilded ball that he and several friends could climb inside and use for their drinking parties. When this church project came to an end he then turned his attention towards constructing a mausoleum to house the memorials of the Dashwood family and friends, placing it on the same hill as the church.

A ‘vortex of pleasure’
I began to wonder about this flamboyant man. Thinking that there was a bound to be a piece on him in The Dictionary of National Biography I used my mobile phone to open the search page at TheGenealogist and did a search for Francis Dashwood. Quickly I found his entry in this particular book record, which forms part of TheGenealogist’s Occupational Records Collection on its website. I was rewarded by a candid description of the 2nd Baronet in an extensive entry that gave me a considerable amount of information, including that he became Baron Le Despencer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Amusingly, considering the ball he would eventually add to the church for his drinking parties, the biography recounts how ‘On 19 Nov 1724, when still under sixteen, he succeeded to his father’s title and estates, and plunged into a vortex of pleasure.’ It goes on to paint a picture of the baronet as a debauched fun-lover who, while travelling in Russia, impersonated the Swedish King Charles XII, with the intention of becoming the lover of Tsarina Anne.

The mausoleum, sitting on the hill above his village and visible from his country estate, was a massive statement from a man who did not wish to fade away after his death. On the map I could see the family seat, West Wycombe Park. The tithe maps and records confirmed that it had passed into the hands of his descendent Sir George Henry Dashwood. The internet told me that the mansion and grounds were now open to the public as the ownership today is in the hands of the National Trust, though the present baronet and his young family still occupy a private part of the house. From the hill I scanned the surrounding countryside in the direction that the Map Explorer revealed that I should look and there I could see, set in the parkland, the yellow-walled Palladian mansion.

To get to the entrance to West Wycombe Park, the house built by the pleasure-loving second baronet so obviously inspired by his visits to Italy on the Grand Tour, I followed the modern map on Map Explorer. Walking down the hill that I had climbed I bore to the left and used Church Lane to descend onto the village high street, a route that would take me past some very ancient cottages.

Making use of the tithe maps on Map Explorer, I was amused to be able to see the names of some of the occupiers at the time of the 5th Baronet’s ownership of the village. As I passed plot 657, according to the pins on the map, I could tell that the house and garden were occupied by the Widow Mead on 7 April 1847, when the survey of this village had been undertaken. Next door, John Shaw was the occupant. Walking down this quaint lane today it would seem that this plot ties up with a largeish house with green stairs up to its front door. Number 43, the National Trust says, was typical of one built for a craftsman, tradesman or professional person. The entrance is reached by steps that are raised over a semi-basement service area. In the centre of a dummy first floor window is the date 1722, and the carved initials R C A. I also noted that above this was one of the old Sun Fire Insurance Marks indicating that it was insured against fire with this company.

At the end of Church Lane is the earliest surviving building in West Wycombe. This is the Church Loft that was once a rest house for pilgrims. Dating from the 15th century, it bridges Church Lane as it meets the High Street, and when it was first put up it would have had four rooms on road level with a wagon way at each end and an accommodation hall above the rooms.

To its left is a 19th century furniture factory that would have been typical in this area. On the ground floor the timber would have been stored and the saws housed while the workshop would have been above. A look at the census returns for West Wycombe on TheGenealogist in that era reveals a noticeably large number of chair makers recorded in the village. Taking the 1841 census as an example, we can find our widow from the tithe records of Church Lane. She is Mary Mead and is listed in the census with the occupation of ‘widow’ and her grown-up sons in their twenties (the 1841 census rounded down the ages of adults to multiples of fives so they both are recorded as 20) have no occupation written down. The majority of her neighbours in the lane, however, are all marked down as chair makers.

Exiting to the High Street from under the Church Loft, I checked one of the other record sets that are available on TheGenealogist as a top layer to the Map Explorer, that of the Image Archive. With this selected I could see an old photograph of the High Street, a Google map and a modern Street View.

As I made my way past old coaching inns on the way to explore the beautiful grounds and house of West Wycombe Park, the Map Explorer was showing itself to be an excellent companion on this pleasant summer’s day walk. TheGenealogist’s records and its map resources provided me with access to historical details that made my excursion to this historic village in the English countryside all the more fulfilling.