Dublin’s Hellfire Club
If you look south-westwards from Dublin city on a clear day, you will be able to see the silhouette of the Hellfire Club, which sits on top of Montpellier Hill in County Dublin. The site is a popular destination for walkers today and has spectacular views of Dublin Bay and Howth. However, it has had a sinister reputation for centuries because of its connection to a group which were known as the Hellfire Club and whose members consisted of wealthy men, some of whom had a reputation and track record of murder and cruelty.
Montpellier Hill’s Hellfire Club
Montpellier Hill and the lands surrounding it were sold by Philip Duke of Wharton to William Conolly, who was serving as the Speaker of the Irish House of Common at the time. A member of the Irish House of Lords, Wharton was a man of dubious character given to excessive drinking and debauchery and coincidentally enough, founded the first Hellfire Club in England in 1719.
The building known today as the Hellfire Club was designed and completed around 1725 by architect Edward Lovett Pearce for Conolly, who originally used it as a summer residence and hunting lodge. Stones from a nearby 5,000 year old passage tomb, similar to the one at Newgrange, were used in its construction. The fact that the hunting lodge had been built from stones from the ancient passage tomb meant that locals believed it was cursed, a belief which was strengthened when shortly after the building was completed, a storm arose which blew off the building’s roof. This, of course, was attributed by locals to the fairies wreaking vengeance for the destruction of their site.
Although today the building is a rather gloomy place, at the time it built, it was reported to have been plastered and white washed with granite steps leading up to the front door. In the early 1760’s, much of the cut stone from the building, including the granite stairs and windowsills, were removed and used to build a shooting lodge, Montpellier House, further down the hill. A description of the Hellfire Club from 1779 by antiquarian Austin Cooper indicates that the building was ‘entirely out of repair’ by that time. By the late 19th century, the building had fallen into complete disrepair and was only used as a shelter for cattle.
The Hell Fire Clubs Britain and Ireland
Britain
According to English historian Geoffrey Ashe, the term Hellfire Club was a nickname given over time to several 18th Century clubs in Great Britain and Ireland whose membership consisted of members of the aristocracy. The first of these clubs was founded by Philip Wharton, the first Duke of Wharton in 1719 but was suppressed under the reign of King George 1st in 1721. According to Ashe, the name Hell Fire Club is most associated with Francis Dashwood’s Order of the Friars of St Francis of Wycombe, also known as the Monks of Medmenham Abbey, which was formed in the late 1740’s. Its motto was ‘do as thou wilt’ (meaning do anything you want to do).Members came to meetings dressed as characters from the Bible or as monks and dined on such delicacies as “Holy Ghost Pie,” “Breast of Venus,” and “Devil’s Loin,”.” Dashwood’s club had a pseudo-chapel with an altar with a statue of Venus and various pornographic images and its activities were given over to parodies of religious rituals and drunken debauchery. Society ladies would attend these events wearing masks and would take the masks off when they were satisfied that they were among friends.
Ireland
The original Irish Hell Fire Club was founded in Dublin in 1735 by a number of prominent Irish aristocrats which included Richard Parsons, First Earl of Rosse, Portraint painter and actor JamesWorsdale and Lieutenant-General Cadwallader Blaney (Lord Blaney). There was also a Hellfire Club in Limerick founded around 1740. The Dublin club originally met in the Eagle Tavern on Cork Hill. The area where the original Eagle tavern once stood was once an area of taverns, brothels and gambling dens known as ‘Hell’ and there was a wooden sculpture of the devil standing there.
The club’s members drank ‘scaltheen’, a mixture of whiskey and butter laced with brimstone and heated with a hot poker and were said to have conducted rituals there which included sacrificing black cats. As their activities came to public attention, they moved some of their activities, particularly in the summer months, to the hunting lodge which today is known in Dublin as the Hell Fire Club, which they rented from Speaker Conolly’s family, he having died in 1729, a mere four years after the building was completed.
Geoffrey Ashe describes the Irish Hell Fire Club as sounding ‘frankly wicked’ with evidence of people dying at their meetings. In addition to this, the track records of some of their members leave no doubt as to what they were capable of when protected by secrecy and power. One of the Dublin Hellfire members, Richard ‘Burn-Chapel’ Whaley, a member of the protestant ascendancy who gained his name by burning Catholic churches, is said to have poured brandy over a servant and set him on fire, causing the deaths of not only the unfortunate servant but also several members of the ‘club’ in the ensuing fire. This incident is said to have been responsible for the decline of the Hellfire Club in its immediate aftermath.
Lord Barry of Santry was also a member of the Dublin hellfire club. He was sentenced to death in 1739 for the murder of a tavern porter in 1738 but received a full pardon from King George II, and left Ireland soon afterwards and died in 1751.
Hellfire Club Revival.
The Hellfire Club was revived in 1771 and the Freeman’s Journal for March 12th 1771 claimed that there were several branches in various parts of Ireland. Its official name was ‘The Holy Fathers’and its regular toast were reported to be ‘The Devil!’ and ‘Damn us All’. Its ringleader was Thomas ‘Buck’ Whaley, son of ‘Burn-Chapel’ Whaley. According to Ashe, Buck Whaley and his gang returned to the area of Montpellier Hill and indulged in gambling, debauchery and satanic rites there. However, after a life of drinking and gambling, Buck Whaley died in 1800 and the revived Hellfire Club went into decline soon afterwards.
