Pump primed
Clare Jenkins checks into the Ensana Buxton Crescent Hotel in ‘Little Switzerland’ for a glittering weekend of spa treatments, genteel strolls and Derbyshire oatcakes.
ACCORDING to a 1947 guide to Derbyshire, Buxton’s Crescent is “the jewel of Buxton… its great semi-circle can be best seen from the green Slopes of Hancliffe opposite. In a blue dusk, with snow on the ground beneath the patterned branches of the bare winter trees and the lights gleaming in its pale curve, it can appear very much in the Romantic tradition as well as the Classical.”
Built in the 1780s for the 5th Duke of Devonshire, the crescent has had a chequered recent history. Originally two hotels (the lettering for one, St Ann’s, is still visible) and a series of lodging houses for rich and poor alike, in the 1950s it became council offices and the public library – until the Assembly Rooms started to collapse under the weight of books.
As a result, it closed in 1992 and reopened only three years ago, after countless financial and legal stop-starts and £70m. Now the Ensana Buxton Crescent Hotel (one of eight hotels owned by the European wellness brand), it’s one of Condé Nast Traveller’s top UK spa destinations. And it’s not hard to see why.
Not only does it still look like “the jewel of Buxton” from the outside, with its Doric columns and fountained forecourt, it’s pretty precious inside. Despite some muted, anonymous colours (in keeping with its Georgian heritage, according to hotel manager James Turner), it exudes restrained elegance and style, with high ceilings, sash windows, original fireplaces and crystal chandeliers. In addition, the food is excellent (including 5* vegetarian at all meals), and the staff are charming.
For Buxton itself, the hotel has been a boon. “Everyone is just so glad it’s back in use again,” said one shopkeeper. “It was boarded up for so long, it was really depressing. But now it looks lovely. I just wish they’d fix the rest of the town now.”
It didn’t take long to see what he meant. Buxton is A Tale of Two Towns. One is the genteel town of the crescent, Frank Matcham’s Edwardian Opera House and its cultural festivals, the Pavilion Gardens and the Devonshire Dome, 32ft wider than the dome in St Paul’s.
Wandering among the cast-iron canopies and conservatories, the neoclassical Cavendish shopping arcade (formerly the Thermal Baths), the indie boutiques and cafes, you can see why a 1930s Shell Guide described Buxton as “a delicious town, combining the intimacy of a mountain village with the spaciousness of an eighteenth-century spa”.
It may not be exactly mountainous – despite its nickname of “Little Switzerland” – but it is the highest market town in the country, 1,000 feet above sea level. And as the “Gateway to the Peak District” (that Shell Guide again), it’s perfectly placed for walking in the Peak District and the North Staffordshire Moorlands.
The other side of Buxton starts in the main street, Spring Gardens. Like so many high streets nowadays, it’s a bit run-down, replete with charity shops and with back alleys leading to abandoned stone cottages. “Is this the best we can do?” sighed one shopper, returning from the soon-to-be-relocated Aldi. “We don’t even have an M&S here any more.”
Well, no, it’s not the best they can do. Even in Spring Gardens, there’s Hargreaves old-fashioned tearooms, the place to take afternoon tea served on Minton’s Haddon Hall china or fill up on cheese scones and Derbyshire oatcakes. All the while surrounded by cabinets filled with Wedgwood, vintage photos of the Royal Family, an ancient typewriter, Victorian jugs. If Mrs Miniver was to wander in with library books under her arm, you wouldn’t be surprised.
And the Pump Room opposite the hotel is a delight, with fine stained glass and plasterwork carvings. Built in 1894 for the 7th Duke of Devonshire as a place to drink the “Blue Waters”, it’s now the busy home of the visitor centre. Over in one corner is an iron lion’s head from which natural spring water spouts perpetually – its twin, St Ann’s Well, is just six feet away in the street.
Inside the Cavendish Arcade, information boards tell the story of the baths and the treat
‘Everyone is just so glad it’s back in use again. It was boarded up for so long.’
ments they offered: Radiant Heat, Buxton Needle Pack, Massage Vibratory, Oxygen Bath, Liver Pack… And the Plombiere Douche or “colon lavage”: a spa water enema named after the French town in which it was first introduced.
As the Buxton Crescent Experience tour later informs us, one 16th century doctor believed the magnesium-rich water “cured things like infertility, consumption of the lungs, inflammation of the liver and ‘the greene sickness’.”
The water is still used widely in the Buxton Crescent Hotel spa, housed in the old Natural Mineral Water Baths and retaining many original features such as gleaming tiles and stainedglass vaulted ceilings. Here you can sample treatments including facials and massages, three types of saunas, three pools (including a rooftop thermal one), a gym and a healthy cafe.
After a relaxing waterbed-based Wave Balance massage and a spell in the Salt Cave (good for the lungs, I’m told), it was time for more exploring. First was the Opera House, all goldleaf and pretty ceiling paintings. From there, a plant-filled conservatory led to the Pavilion Gardens, glowing in autumn colours, with lakes and bridges, a bandstand and bird life.
On our last morning, we signed up to the fascinating Buxton Crescent tour, where guide Gill Williamson traced the history of the town from Celtic and Roman times (when it was known as Aquae Arnamatiae, “The Waters of the Goddess of the Grove”) to today. It ended back in the Pump Room, where we bottled some fresh water to take away.
“Astonishing to think,” said Gill, “that this is four or five thousand years old. And that what’s falling as rain at the moment will be drunk as spring water in another few thousand years.”