A PUB landlord has completed 'a kind of Da Vinci Code journey' through the notorious Hell Fire Caves - and written a book to dispel some of the myths surrounding the West Wycombe tourist attraction.

Eamonn Loughran, 42, has published 'Secret Symbols of the Hell Fire Club' after living for 20 years on West Wycombe Road and looking up at the Dashwood Mausoleum every day.

He says the much-published 'history' of the Hell Fire Club adds up to little more than gossip, adding: “The idea that Sir Francis Dashwood dug these caves simply to get drunk and worship the devil is absolute rubbish.

“There were a lot of very bad books written about the club from early 1900s onwards, mostly by journalists who sensationalised the stories.”

Rumours of black magic, satanic rituals and orgies surrounded Dashwood's club when it was around in the 1750s and 60s.

But after years of research Mr Loughran has found that though many of these activities undoubtedly went on, the ideas behind the caves are much more intricate and complex than might appear.

The father-of-three got interested in the Dashwood estate when he met a researcher who was collecting voice recordings from farm workers and people speaking in the old Buckinghamshire dialect.

His 'ears pricked up' when he heard some of the voices tell of local ghost stories and he began to collect his own oral evidence of local legends and folklore.

He ended up meeting descendants of illegitimate children born of amorous liaisons in the caves, as well as existing members of Hell Fire Chapters in the UK and abroad. He now lives in Lincolnshire and has since become a member of one of the Chapters.

Mr Loughran is critical of the way the Hell Fire Caves are full of “tourist kitsch” and leave visitors with “quite a negative response”.

He said: “I know they do a good trade with things like kids' parties, but there are no ghosts down there and it's a bit of a shame that people are going to what's quite a beautiful and mythological place and treating it like some kind of Halloween experience.

“The caves are really a very important monument and should, like the tunnels inside the Egyptian pyramids, be studies in depth.

“To enter them with no more information than is found in a ‘tourist attraction’ would be like treating Westminster Abbey as somewhere that's merely scary and Gothic.”

He says the caves, along with the church and mausoleum, are full of intricate symbolism, science and philosophy and are a 'testament to a man's love of liberty and freedom'. He added: “We need to look very closely at what this actually is”.

His book examines the astronomical positions of the caves' entrances - “a little bit like you would with Stone Henge”, while indicating the possible existence of Knights Templar cosmology deep underground at West Wycombe.

He promises a look at the “most notorious of secret societies from the inside” and details rare information deriving from Sir Francis Dashwood’s intellectually brilliant daughter Rachel Frances Antonina (‘The Infidel’), who knew the poet Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey. There is also a focus on a 1940's 'Phoenix Nest' occult group which met at West Wycombe and whose members published books on esoteric subjects up to the 1970’s.

Secret Symbols of the Hell Fire Club is available in hardback on www.amazon.co.uk for £22.