Summary
Thermal hot baths, reconstructed in 1853 by the architect Henry Currey, remodelled in 1900 by William Radford Bryden and converted into a shopping arcade in 1984-1987 by Derek Latham and Company.
Reasons for Designation
Legacy Record – This information may be included in the List Entry Details.
History
The history of Buxton is inextricably linked to the geothermal spring waters which emerge in the centre of the town. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area spans over 6,000 years and the Romans developed a bathing resort there in the C1 AD, the only other Roman spa town in Britain besides Bath. By the late C15, the town’s spring was known as a holy well dedicated to St Anne and a chapel had been built there in her honour. Buxton’s popularity boomed during the late C18 and C19 with ever-increasing numbers of tourists drawn to the purported health-giving properties of the town’s spring water. From around 1780 local landowners, the Dukes of Devonshire, developed Buxton into a fashionable spa town on the model of Bath and over the next century, they commissioned a series of buildings to provide for the hospitality of visitors, including grand townhouses, hotels, cultural venues and thermal baths.
Buxton’s first coal-fired hot baths were built in 1817 to designs by Charles Sylvester and comprised a modest, flat-roofed building. Known as the Hot Baths, the building was rebuilt in 1853 by the architect Henry Currey (1820-1900) in an Italianate style and reopened as the Thermal Baths. This was a single-storey, iron and glass structure whose design was purportedly inspired by the Crystal Palace (1851 by Joseph Paxton). In 1864, a parade of shops was added along the eastern elevation of the baths, known as the Hot Bath Colonnade. Currey’s thermal baths were altered on several occasions through the later C19 and were substantially remodelled in 1900 by William Radford Bryden (1851-1941), who replaced the iron and glass colonnade to the baths and parade of shops with an ashlar Gritstone façade. In 1909, a cast iron arcade was added around the building along its southern elevation and continuing onto the Hot Bath Colonnade. The Hot Baths permanently closed in 1963 and remained vacant for the next two decades. Soon after closure, the cast iron canopy was removed. Between 1984 and 1987, the baths were converted into a shopping arcade by the architects Derek Latham and Company, with a new stained-glass, barrel-vaulted roof installed by the architectural artist Brian Clarke.
Henry Currey was an English architect and surveyor who developed a successful career mainly designing public buildings. Having trained under Decimus Burton and William Cubitt, he worked extensively for the Devonshire Estate and designed many Italianate public buildings in Buxton during the mid-nineteenth century, including the Thermal Baths and Natural Baths, the Palace Hotel and several churches. Aside from his work for the Devonshire Estate, Currey was responsible for many public buildings in London, some built in his roles as architect and surveyor to St Thomas’ Hospital, Coram’s Foundling Hospital and Magdalen Hospital. He was a made a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1856 and served as its vice-president from 1874-1877 and 1889-1893. He was also a fellow of the Surveyors’ Institute (now the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors).
Details
Thermal hot baths, reconstructed in 1853 by the architect Henry Currey, remodelled in 1900 by William Radford Bryden and converted into a shopping arcade in 1984-1987 by Derek Latham and Company.
MATERIALS: the building is faced in ashlar Gritstone with ashlar Gritstone dressings and a principal roof covering of Welsh slate. There is also a stained-glass barrel vault roof with other areas of flat roof under a bituminous covering. There are timber and glass shopfronts along the south and north elevations.
PLAN: the building comprises several elements from different phases of development, creating a complex plan. Its overall form is rectangular, with constituent parts arranged around an infilled courtyard.
EXTERIOR: the building is predominantly one storey in height with two taller, later elements: a two-storey element with a pitched roof on the western corner of the building and a three-storey element with a hipped roof within the infilled central courtyard. The principal elevation faces south and comprises a Neoclassical arcade of ten bays surmounted by an entablature and balustraded parapet topped with urns in two alternating styles. The round arches have keystones and moulded imposts and are flanked by clustered pilasters. Within the arcading are large, two-pane sash windows now used as shopfronts, and entrances to the building within the third and eighth arches. The two central arches retain historic, timber doorways with large fanlights. The stonework to the two central arches is rusticated, and above them, the parapet is solid rather than balustraded, incised with the lettering: BUXTON BATHS. At the western end of the arcade is a narrow, single-storey link with a doorway with a pedimented cornice, adjoining The Crescent to the west. The design of the principal elevation continues around a curved corner element onto the eastern elevation by one bay, with the rest of the eastern frontage formed by a parade of shops known as The Colonnade (separately listed at Grade II, National Heritage List for England entry 1257841).
The north elevation, fronting George Street, comprises three elements. The north-east corner of the building is a single-storey, curved shop unit with large windows within timber frames and a stone parapet, which forms part of The Colonnade. The central element is of one storey with three large windows with unadorned, square-headed ashlar surrounds, beneath a stone parapet with an ashlar string course above the window heads. An ashlar string course runs across this section of the elevation roughly halfway up the window surrounds. On the north-west corner of the building is a two-storey element with six bays onto the north elevation and two wide bays onto the west elevation, under a pitched roof. There are three large windows and a doorway on the north elevation with unadorned, square-headed ashlar surrounds and a cill band running across the façade, broken by the doorway. There is an additional, very small window immediately to the east of the doorway, also with ashlar surrounds.
The west elevation has two blocked windows matching those of the north elevation but without a cill band. On the first floor, there are six windows on the north elevation and two on the west elevation, all of the same design as those on the ground floor. A cill band runs the length of the two elevations at first-floor level, as does a string course above the first-floor window heads. Above this is a stone parapet on the north elevation and a gable wall on the west elevation with a small, rectangular opening set within the gable. To the south of the two-storey element on the west elevation is an adjoining single-storey element with a modern garage door and a large, pedimented parapet. The rest of the west elevation is enclosed as a service area.
INTERIOR: It is understood that the original layout of the baths remains legible, and two small baths remain on display. The corridors are understood to have glazed and coloured tiles of around 1900, and ornate, tiled doorways, some round-headed with keystones, others square-headed with cornice and keystones. The decoration is understood to include floriated swags, fruit and foliage. There is a stained-glass, barrel-vaulted roof over part of the central courtyard.
The building was previously listed under the name Buxton Thermal Baths.
Listing NGR: SK0584573586
This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 7 July 2022 to amend the description
