Entrenched assumptions can die hard. This is certainly the case with regard to the reputation of Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet (later 11th Baron le Despencer), the politician and connoisseur who developed the house, garden and wider estate at West Wycombe across some 50 years in the 18th century. Dashwood has been set down to posterity as a libertine, a convenor of orgies and even of satanic rites, as a leading member of the Hellfire Club of London-based rakes. It was said that the boisterous baronet rented Medmenham Abbey on the River Thames as a venue for such activities and that the caves he had excavated inside Wycombe Hill doubled up as ‘extreme party’ spaces.

Historians have absorbed and repeated these salacious tales without question over the years, apparently on the grounds th

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