A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



to two distinct remains. In any case the plastered wall seems to be the 

 structure mentioned by another physician of the same age, Thomas Short, 

 who says that before 1709 St. Anne's Well 'rose into a stone bason, shut 

 up within an ancient Roman brickwall a yard square within and a yard 

 high on three sides.' In 1709 this was demolished to make place for a 

 ' beautiful Arch.' 1 Another vestige of the baths was noticed about the 

 same time. Mr. White, of Buxton Hall, was driving a level to the Bath, 

 50 yards east of St. Anne's Well (that is, about halfway across the Crescent), 

 and his workmen found ' buried deep under the grass and corn some 

 moulded sheets of lead, spread upon great beams of timber, about 4 yards 

 square, with broken ledges round about, which had been a leaden cystern.' 

 It is likely enough that this was the lead casing of a Roman bath, but 

 the discovery was not pursued. 2 Indeed, none of the finds made about 

 1700 attracted more than local attention. Stukeley, visiting Buxton in 

 1725, saw practically no Roman remains, and Horsley did not recognise 

 the place as a Roman site. 



A third and more important discovery followed in 1780 178 1, during 

 the construction of St. Anne's Crescent. A new tepid spring was en- 

 countered, and near it the remains of an oblong bath, measuring 15 by 24 

 (or 30) feet. The water entered this bath at the west end ' through a 

 pipe of lead so large as to receive a man's thigh,' and a ' floodgate ' let it out 

 at the east end. The floor was of red plaster, 6 inches thick, and is 

 alleged to have dropped at one end to a boat-shaped cavity, 1 8 inches 

 deep. The wall was 3 feet high, and rudely built of limestone, 

 covered outside with a strong cement or (according to another version) 

 of ' mean stone masonry coated on the inside with limestone.' On the top 

 of the walls were laid strong oak beams, firmly connected together at the 

 corners. The site of the bath is given as 6 yards from the then ' Bath- 

 room,' which, I believe, is now represented by the Natural Baths close to 

 St. Anne's Well, at the west end of the Crescent. The remains were 

 ordered to be filled up without examination, and a portion of the Crescent 

 was built over them. 3 



These records, meagre as they are, suffice to show that the Roman 

 baths of Buxton were not merely the baths of a villa or a fort, they 

 belonged obviously to some bathing establishment. This establishment 

 included one or perhaps two of those immersion basins which occur 

 regularly in Roman thermal baths and distinguish them from the vapour 

 baths of towns or houses. The baths at Bath had half-a-dozen such 

 basins of various shapes and sizes, and the la rgest of them offered to the 

 bather a sheet of water 40 feet broad and 83 feet long. Buxton cannot 



1 Short, Mineral Waters of Derb. (London, 1734), P- 44- A bit of the plaster got into Ralph 

 Thoresby's Museum (Museum Thoresbyanum (London, 1713), p. 55 8). 



2 Short, p. 23. He says the discovery occurred about 36 years before he wrote, i.e. in 1697 or 

 1698. 



3 Pilkington, i. 211 ; Pegge, p. 36 (partly from a workman, who is probably responsible for the 

 lead pipe and boat-like cavity). Snorter notices, Bray, p. 230, Derby Mercury, 6 Sept. 1781. A fourth 

 discovery is said to have been made about twenty or twenty-five years since, at the back of Clarendon 

 Buildings, in Manchester Road, near its junction with Marlborough Road (Derb. Arch, Journ.yxv. 161). 

 But till more is known of this, it is best omitted. 



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