Buxton crescent
| Buxton Crescent | |
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Buxton Crescent
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| General information | |
| Town or city | Buxton, Derbyshire |
| Country | England |
| Coordinates | 53°15′32″N 1°54′50″W / 53.259°N 1.914°WCoordinates: 53°15′32″N 1°54′50″W / 53.259°N 1.914°W |
| Construction started | 1780 |
| Completed | 1789 |
| Client | Fifth Duke of Devonshire |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | John Carr |
Buxton Crescent is a Grade-I-listed building in the town of Buxton, Derbyshire, England. Owing much to the Royal Crescent in Bath, but described by the Royal Institution of British Architects as "more richly decorated and altogether more complex", it was designed by the architect John Carr, and built for the Fifth Duke of Devonshire between 1780 and 1789.
The Crescent faces the site of St Ann's Well, where warm spring water has flowed for thousands of years. The well is at the foot of The Slopes, a steep landscaped hillside in the centre of Buxton. Here the geological strata channel mineral water from a mile below ground, to emerge at a constant 27.5 °C (81.5 °F).
Originally detached, the Crescent building is now the centrepiece of an attached range facing The Slopes.
The Crescent was built for William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire, as part of his scheme to establish Buxton as a fashionable Georgian spa town.
The facade forms an arc of a circle facing southeast. It was built as a unified structure incorporating a hotel, five lodging houses, and a grand assembly room with a fine painted ceiling. The Assembly Rooms became the social heart of 18th-century Buxton.
On the ground floor arcade were shops (including a hair and wig-dresser) and kitchens were in the basement.
Over time, St. Ann's Hotel at the western end of the Crescent, and the Great Hotel, incorporating the Assembly Rooms at the eastern end, took over the intervening lodging houses in the centre of the building.
The western end served as a hotel. The eastern end served as council offices, a library and a clinic. The hotel at the western end closed in the mid-1980s due to the high cost of necessary repairs. The whole building was closed when major structural problems were discovered in the assembly rooms, and by 1992 lay empty. The hotel part was bought by the local council in 1993, at which time the whole building fell into public ownership.
In 1993 with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund the High Peak Borough Council purchased the Crescent to act as a temporary caretaker of the building until a suitable buyer could be found. A further £1.5 million from English Heritage was used to make the building weathertight.
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