Buxton Old Hall: The Earl of Shrewsbury's Tower House Re-discovered

Abstract

Behind the early eighteenth-century south front of the Old Hall Hotel are to be found the substantial remains of a tower house built by George Talbot, sixth earl of Shrewsbury and his wife Bess of Hardwick in 1572–73. The building, which was believed to have been demolished in 1670, survives behind eighteenth- and nineteenth-century alterations and additions. It is a tower house of double pile plan and four storeys in height, a description which matches closely a contemporary account of the building. The house, known at the time as the New Hall, appears to have been built in order to provide lodgings for persons of rank visiting Buxton to bathe in the thermal bath adjoining the hall and to take the waters at the nearby St Anne's Well. The first guest of importance to have resided there was Mary Queen of Scots, whose first visit to Buxton was delayed until the building's completion in 1573. It has been recognized recently that building work carried-out in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries left intact a significant amount of the fabric of the original structure. The building was recorded in 1990 by the Threatened Buildings Section of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, at the request of Derbyshire County Council.