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BUXTON , twenty miles north of Ashbourne, was founded in 79 AD by
the Romans, who happened upon a spring from which 1500 gallons of pure
water gushed every hour at a constant 28°C. So famous did the spring
become that Mary, Queen of Scots, was allowed by her captors to come
here for treatment of her rheumatism. The spa's heyday came at the end
of the eighteenth century with the fifth Duke of Devonshire's grand
design to create a northern answer to Bath or Cheltenham, a plan
thwarted by the climate, but not before some distinguished eighteenth-century
buildings had been erected.
Like many former British spas, the town's heritage has been marred by a
lack of money to refurbish ageing properties, though a belated attempt
has been made to rescue some of the finer buildings. The thermal baths
were closed in 1972, but the sweep of the Crescent , incorporating the
former St Ann's Hotel - its grandest architectural feature, modelled on
the Royal Crescent in Bath - has been preserved thanks to a hefty
government grant. The little street fountain in front of the Crescent,
supplied by St Ann's Well, is still used to fill local water bottles and
the nearby Pump Room , first erected in 1894, provides space for
temporary art exhibitions in the summer. At the eastern end of the
Crescent, a glass and cast-iron canopy hides the entrance to the
Cavendish Arcade shopping centre, which makes a hash of preserving the
original eighteenth-century bath houses.
The spa remnants apart, the town is at its best in the nearby landscaped
Pavilion Gardens , just to the southwest of the Crescent and the home of
the grand - and grandly refurbished - thousand-seat Opera House (tours
usually Sat at 11am; tel 01298/72190), facing Water Street. This is the
main venue for the Buxton Festival held over two weeks at the back end
of July. The glasshouse gardens next to the Opera House shelter an array
of exotic foliage and you can walk through to the double-decker
glass-and-iron pavilion itself, where there's a bar, coffee shop and
restaurant with nice views.
Fronting the Crescent, an attractive park known as The Slopes - laid out
in 1818 in the last flush of municipal enthusiasm - leads up to the
traffic-choked Market Place. The top of The Slopes offers the best
prospect over the Crescent to the Palace Hotel and the Devonshire
Hospital ; the latter, built in 1790 as a riding school, is covered by
what for a long time was the world's widest domed roof. Just along
Terrace Road from Market Place, the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery
(Easter-Oct Tues-Fri 9.30am-5.30pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 10.30am-5pm; rest
of year closed Sun; £1) houses a collection of ancient fossils, rocks
and pots found in the Peak District, among them jawbones from Neolithic
lions and bears. The displays on the first floor document the history of
the region - and the town - from the Bronze Age through to more recent
times.
As rewarding as any of Buxton's architectural attractions is Poole's
Cavern (Easter-Oct daily 10am-5pm; £4.50; tel 01298/26978), a mile to
the south of town: follow the Broadwalk through the Pavilion Gardens and
then take Temple Road. The guided-tour patter is irksome, but the orange
and blue-grey stalactite formations are amazingly complex and the
chambers impressively large; one marks the underground source of the
River Wye.
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