Are .htaccess file contents cached?

Question

I've used an .htaccess file to redirect a website to another domain. Now I need to remove the redirect, I've deleted the .htaccess file, but requests to the site are still redirecting. I've restarted Apache but no luck. Are .htaccess file contents cached, or is there anything I'm missing here?

.htaccess contents were as follows:

Redirect 301 / http://www.example.com/

Thanks

Answer 1

Solved the problem by uploading an empty .htaccess file. Still interested to know why simply deleting it didn't work though..