The Hellfire Club was an exclusive English club that met irregularly from 1746 to around 1763, run by Sir Francis Dashwood. In popular legend they held notorious, orgiastic and satanic meetings at Medmenham Abbey, beside the Thames.

The term was not invented by the 1750 club; they first met to celebrate an earlier club founded in 1720 by Charles Edward. Other clubs using the name were set up throughout the 18th century.

At the first gathering in May 1746, they met at the George and Vulture public house in Lombard Street, London, the meeting place of the 1720s group. The initial membership was limited to twelve but it soon increased. Of the original twelve, seven have been almost certainly identified: Dashwood, Robert Vansittart, William Hogarth, Thomas Potter , Francis Duffield, Edward Thompson, Paul Whitehead . The later membership is potentially immense, including John Wilkes and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.

They did not call themselves the Hellfire Club, but used a number of mockingly religious titles, initially the Brotherhood of St. Francis of Wycombe. Other titles used included the Order of Knights of West Wycombe and later the Monks of Medmenham. The members called each other brothers and referred to Dashwood as abbot; female guests were nuns. Unlike the more determined Satanists of the 1720s the club motto was Fay ce que vouldras (Do what thou wilt) from François Rabelais, later used by Aleister Crowley. Although indulging in pseudo-Satanic rites the 'monks' were keener devotaries of Bacchus and Venus.

The George and Vulture burned down in 1749, possibly owing to a club meeting. After a hiatus meetings were resumed at members' homes. Dashwood built a temple in the grounds of his West Wycombe home and nearby 'catacombs' were excavated. The first meeting at Wycombe was held on Walpurgis Night, 1752; a much larger meeting, it was something of a failure and no large-scale meetings were held there again. Despite this and the factionalising of the club Dashwood acquired the ruins of Medmenham Abbey in 1755, which was rebuilt by the architect Nicholas Revett in the style of the 18th century Gothic revival. In 1762 factional stresses and political rivalries turned the affairs of the club into public clashes and under heavy pressure the club finally disbanded.

The name Hellfire Club has since been used by numerous other unrelated swingers' and BDSM clubs in cities around the world:

• In Australia, loosely-connected Hellfire Clubs with a BDSM theme were founded in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane by underground film director and producer Richard Wollstonecroft .

External links

• A history of the Hellfire Club