Town in Derbyshire, England

Buxton

England's highest market town has a tap where anyone can fill a bottle with warm Roman spring water, once prescribed to Mary, Queen of Scots.

Key information

County: Derbyshire
Nation: England
Population: about 22,000 (2011 Census)
Known for: Spa waters, the Crescent, the Opera House, well dressing and Buxton bottled water
What locals are called: Buxtonians
Famous people: Mary, Queen of Scots (visitor); William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire; Frank Matcham; Edward Milner
Football clubs: Buxton FC (the Bucks)

About Buxton

The tap that has been running for 2,000 years

Walk up to St Ann's Well opposite the Crescent and you can fill a bottle for free with water that has been bubbling up at a steady 28°C for as long as anyone has measured it. It falls as rain on the surrounding hills and spends years filtering through limestone before it emerges warm. The Romans noticed. They built a bathing settlement here called Aquae Arnemetiae, roughly 'the spa of the goddess of the grove', and Buxton sat at a meeting of Roman roads in the hills. The water is now a national brand. Buxton mineral water is bottled in the town and sold well beyond the Peak District.

A queen came for her aching joints

In the 1500s Buxton became a place where the well-connected went to soak away their pains. Mary, Queen of Scots visited several times in the 1570s and 1580s while held in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had a hall in the town. She was seeking relief from rheumatism. It was an odd sort of holiday for a prisoner, but it put Buxton on the map as a cure for the royal and the rich.

The Duke who wanted to build a second Bath

The man who turned Buxton into a Georgian resort was the 5th Duke of Devonshire, whose family owned much of the land. In the 1780s he commissioned the architect John Carr of York to build the Crescent, a sweeping curve of hotel, lodgings and baths modelled on the grand terraces of Bath. The Crescent was a bold bet on a spot nearly 300 metres up in the hills, where the weather can turn grim. After a long restoration it reopened as a spa hotel in 2020. A later Victorian touch was the Devonshire Dome, built over a former horse stable for the Devonshire Hospital in 1881. Its diameter of around 44 metres made it wider than the dome of St Peter's in Rome.

Gardens, gilt and a very Victorian opera house

When the railways arrived, Buxton grew fast. Edward Milner, a protégé of the Crystal Palace architect Joseph Paxton, laid out the Pavilion Gardens, which opened in 1871. The glass-and-iron Octagon concert hall followed in 1875, designed by Robert Rippon Duke. In 1903 the theatre architect Frank Matcham, who designed the London Coliseum, gave the town the Buxton Opera House, a jewel-box of plasterwork and gilding that still stages shows and hosts the Buxton Festival each July. The town is also known for Solomon's Temple, a small tower built on Grin Low in 1896 and now a landmark on the hill above the town.

Dressed wells, dark caves and wild roads

Every July Buxton dresses its wells. Panels of wet clay are pressed with petals, seeds, moss and bark to make huge, colourful pictures, a Derbyshire tradition of giving thanks for the water. Beneath Buxton Country Park, Poole's Cavern is a show cave said to be named after a medieval outlaw. The River Wye rises on the moors near the town and runs on through the Peak District. On the moors above the town, the A537 climbs to the old Cat and Fiddle pub, once the second highest in England at 1,690 feet. The road is a favourite with motorcyclists, and drivers are warned about ice.

The Bucks and the high-altitude pitch

Buxton FC, founded in 1877 and nicknamed the Bucks, play at the Silverlands, set in the hills where a cold wind is never far away. They are one of the oldest clubs in the region. The town's long-standing industry is limestone. Quarries around Buxton, including Tunstead, are among the largest in Europe and have supplied stone across the country. Today Buxtonians share the town with walkers, festival-goers and students at Buxton & Leek College, which uses the Devonshire Dome, and everyone seems to carry a water bottle.