THE

 HELLFIRE CLUB

Beside the castle stands the hellfire club. these clubs were set up in the mid seventeen hundreds by the Duke of Wharton but they were soon to be outlawed and abolished by the royal command.

to the casual observer it is a blot on the landscape, not blending in with the castle on its left. if one were not aware of its historical significance one might say that it should be levelled.

but this is also part of the rich heritage which is unique to askeaton. iniskeftiny of the early Desmonds, rockbarkley of the berkleys and askeyton of the notorious Hell fire club.

for this building was the meeting place of the wild, roystering, dissolute bucks of Georgian times.

as a building it predates the other building of the same name in the Dublin mountains, in fact, it is the only other surviving building in Ireland associated with the Hell fire :brethren:.

it may have been built either as a dwelling house or as a hunting lodge. then, with the spread of the Masonic orders during the 18th century, it became the meeting place of the local members.

the hell fire clubs were modeled on the medmenham monks and similar "orders" of England whose motto was "anything goes".

their behaviour was the very opposite to monastic. even down to the present day lurid tales are told of their outrageous rituals which were far from innocent. but there is no record of any act to compare with the deliberate burning of a servant which took place in the Dublin hell fire club.

even though it was originally an all male club, one female who was a member of a local landowning family was enrolled. there are whisperings of satanic rites being performed in the club but there is no solid evidence to support this.

in the 1780s it would appear that the hell fire club was just an ordinary hostelry because the local historians tell us that the pilgrim stayed there (which you can read on the abbey page)

A portrait of some of the members of the Askeaton Hellfire club hangs in the national Gallery ,Dublin

most of the Hellfire clubs in England were shut down in 1721, but the Askeaton club, which was founded in 1740, probably stayed in existence up to the end of the century. during the nineteenth century it was used as a barracks.

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