Driver Magazine - Issue 2 of 3 2025 - Magazine - Page 61
Building the Crescent
John Carr’s design for The Crescent was ambitious to say the least. It was to have five lodging houses, two hotels, a row of
shops, and a covered arcade connecting everything to the nearby baths. It was all arranged in a perfect semicircle. This made
the Crescent stand out from the more common elliptical designs in places like Bath and Edinburgh.
At each end were the hotels, St Ann’s Hotel and the Great Hotel; two of the earliest purpose-built hotels in Britain. Between
them, lodging houses offered rooms to suit different budgets. The higher-end ones looked out onto The Slopes (landscaped
later to mirror the curve of the building), while the more affordable ones were at the back.
There were also Assembly Rooms (ballroom and card room) where the wealthy guests could dance, drink, and live something
of a party life several nights a week. These rooms had chandeliers from London, mahogany doors, and plasterwork influenced
by Robert Adam (the architect who influenced the development of Western architecture). Everything was made to look as
impressive as possible. For example, there are stunning columns that are just for show and don’t actually support anything!
Carr considered pretty much every aspect of the Crescent and made sure it was stunning from every angle. Even the view
from above was thought about by grouping the chimneys into tall, dramatic stacks visible from the hills.
The Crescent Opens Its Doors
When The Crescent opened in 1789, it was extremely successful. Buxton, already popular with writers, artists, and adventurers,
suddenly had the infrastructure to match its reputation.
However, by the mid-1800s, tastes were changing, and the high-flyers of the time were moving more towards coastal
locations. Attendance in the assembly rooms quickly dropped, and fewer people found Buxton as attractive as they once had.
An End And A New Beginning
The Crescent stayed active well into the 20th century. The Great Hotel rebranded as the Crescent Hotel in the late 1800s and
eventually became part of the NHS in 1948. The St Ann’s Hotel at the western end managed to stay operational until the
1980s before being sold to a chain. Unfortunately, decades of underinvestment caught up with the Crescent and, after a
storm destroyed part of the roof in 1990, it closed down.
Restoration And Reopening
Obviously, that’s not the end of the story, though, as the Crescent underwent a full restoration and is now open once more as
a stunning 5-star hotel.
Staying there taught me a lot more than I expected and gave me a strong understanding of why buildings like this are far
more important than a lot of people realise.
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