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Corbar Hill

BuxtonMountains and hills of DerbyshireMountains and hills of the Peak DistrictUse British English from March 2020
Corbar Cross at Dusk
Corbar Cross at Dusk

Corbar Hill is a sandstone hill at the south end of Combs Moss, overlooking Buxton in Derbyshire, in the Peak District. The summit (marked by a trig pillar) is 437 metres (1,434 ft) above sea level.The north west side of the hill (and most of Combs Moss and Black Edge) is designated as "open access" land for the public, following the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.Corbar Cross was a gift from the Duke of Devonshire to Buxton Catholics, who erected it at the summit in 1950 to mark the Holy Year declared by Pope Pius XII. The cross was painted pink as a prank in the 1990s. Protesters against Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the UK in 2010 cut down the cross. A replacement 6-metre-high (20 ft) solid oak cross was donated by a firm in Lancashire and installed in 2011. Corbar Woods is Buxton's oldest woodland and is included in Buxton's "The Park" conservation area. Its 54 acres are owned and managed by the Buxton Civic Association. The woods were used for coppicing trees in medieval times. There are remains of a white coal pit, which used dried coppice branches to generate the high temperatures needed to smelt lead. The 19th-century paths through the ancient woods, known as the Victorian Swiss Walks, were designed by Joseph Paxton (who also laid out the original Buxton Pavilion Gardens). These paths allowed visitors to the spa town to enjoy views over Buxton's fine buildings from the hilltop. The "Ring of Trees" waymarked walk around Buxton runs through Corbar Wood. The main tree species are beech, yew and oak. The woodland floor at the higher west end of the woods is covered with swathes of bluebells each May. The woods are habitat to common birds (such as thrushes, tits and finches) but are also home to nuthatches and woodpeckers. Corbar Hill House (on Corbar Road in Buxton) is a Grade II listed building. It was built in the 19th century in the style of a French château (with a mansard roof and fountain), apparently for the Ryder family. It later became John Duncan School, which closed in 2003. It has now been converted into private apartments. Corbar Hill Hydro was converted from the Clarendon guest house in the 1890s to offer hydropathic treatments. It was sold in the 1930s for nurses' accommodation.Nithen Quarry on Corbar Hill was used for many years as a source of high quality sandstone for the buildings of Buxton, including the town hall, which was built in the 1890s.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Corbar Hill (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Corbar Hill
Punch Bowl Park, High Peak

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Wikipedia: Corbar HillContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 53.26573 ° E -1.92432 °
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Corbar Cross

Punch Bowl Park
SK17 6TB High Peak
England, United Kingdom
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Corbar Cross at Dusk
Corbar Cross at Dusk
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Cavendish Golf Club
Cavendish Golf Club

Cavendish Golf Club in Buxton, Derbyshire, opened in 1925 and was designed by Alister MacKenzie. The course is 5,721 yards (5,231 m) long with a par of 68. It is consistently voted as one of the top 100 golf courses in England. In 1923, Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, commissioned Dr Alister MacKenzie to create and build an 18-hole golf course on moorland owned by the Devonshire estate in Buxton. The course was open to men and women from its opening in 1925. The Cavendish was one of MacKenzie's last UK course designs. He went on to design courses in Australasia, South America and the USA, including the world-famous Augusta National golf course, which opened in 1932 and hosts The Masters annual major golf championship. The Cavendish course was bought by the members from the 11th Duke of Devonshire in 1955. Although the course is under 6,000 yards long, the design of the sloping greens is acknowledged as its main challenge. The course record of 61 is 7 under par.In the 1990s, many native deciduous trees were planted around the course, funded by grants from the Forestry Commission.Buxton and High Peak Golf Club was the first golf course in Buxton, founded in 1886 on Fairfield Common. In 1899, the Ladies Golf Club's nine hole course was set out on Temple Meads (which was developed as a housing estate in the 1960s). After the First World War, Canadian troops based in Buxton created a toboggan run across what would later be the first three fairways of the Cavendish course. The toboggan run is still marked on the OS Explorer Map OL24. The Peak District Boundary Walk runs across the golf course.

The Slopes, Buxton
The Slopes, Buxton

The Slopes (formerly known as The Terrace) is a Grade-II-listed public park in Buxton, Derbyshire in England. The area was laid out by landscape architect Jeffry Wyatville in 1811 for William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, as pleasure grounds for the guests of The Crescent hotel to promenade. The design of The Terrace was modified further by Sir Joseph Paxton in 1859.The grassed bank of The Slopes lies between the Town Hall and Higher Buxton at the top and St Ann's Well and the Pump Room (into which the Buxton spring mineral waters were piped) at the bottom, facing The Crescent hotel, the Victorian spa baths and the Old Hall Hotel. The terraced area is intersected with numerous footpaths. The Terrace had previously been a bare hillside known as St Ann's Cliff. In 1787 Major Hayman Rooke uncovered a long section of the Roman town wall, which is now beneath the landscaped hillside of The Slopes. At the same time Rooke also documented details of the base of a temple in the same area, overlooking the site of the baths and springs. The temple was dedicated to the water deity Arnemetia. It had a shrine room set on a rectangular podium, with a columned portico at the front. Twelve Grade-II*-listed 18th-century decorated limestone urns (originally from Lord Burlington's estate at Londesborough Hall in Yorkshire) are set on gritstone plinths along walled footpaths and stone steps.Buxton Town Hall looks down from the top of The Slopes. It was designed by William Pollard in a French Renaissance style and built between 1887 and 1889.The Grade-II-listed war memorial from c.1920 commemorates the soldiers from Buxton who perished in the two World Wars. An ashlar obelisk on a stepped platform is fronted by a bronze statue of Winged Victory holding a sword and a laurel wreath. The sculptor was Louis Frederick Roslyn.The Met Office climatological station for Buxton is situated on The Slopes directly above the war memorial. The instruments at the station record various meteorological measurements (including temperatures, rainfall, humidity and wind speed and direction), which are read daily by volunteers. Buxton's weather was formally recorded in the grounds of Devonshire Royal Hospital since 1865. The climatological station was relocated to its present site in 1925. It is one of the oldest weather stations in the UK.The Slopes were restored in 1994 with grants from the European Commission and English Heritage.

Palace Hotel, Buxton
Palace Hotel, Buxton

The Palace Hotel was opened in 1868 in Buxton, Derbyshire, England. It holds a prominent position in the town's central Conservation Area overlooking the town. It is a Grade-II listed building.It was built from 1864 to 1866 as the first-class Buxton Hotel on the hill next to Buxton's two new railway stations. It cost £50,000 to build and had 105 rooms, a grand ballroom and 5 acres of landscaped gardens with croquet lawns and a tennis court. After its construction, the venture was liquidated and the hotel was auctioned in November 1867 at the Waterloo Hotel in Manchester. It was bought for £20,000 by a consortium including several of the original investors, the Duke of Devonshire and with the LNWR railway company as a major shareholder. It opened as the Palace Hotel in May 1868. It was the largest hotel in Buxton until the luxury Empire Hotel with 300 rooms was opened in 1903 (although the Empire never reopened after World War I and was demolished in 1964). The three-storey Palace Hotel is built of millstone grit stone and was designed in the style of a French château (with a Mansard roof with iron ridge railings and a central tower) by Henry Currey. Currey was the 7th Duke of Devonshire's architect and he also designed Buxton's St Ann's Well of 1852, Thermal Baths, Natural Baths, Pump Room, Market Hall, Holy Trinity Church, Congregational Church, Devonshire Park Chapel, Christchurch at Burbage, Wye House Asylum and Corbar Hall. Fellow architect Robert Rippon Duke was the Clerk of Works for the hotel's construction and he designed the grand marble-decorated extensions to the building in 1887, including a large new dining room at the rear and a new west wing.The hotel was an annexe to the Granville Military Hospital during World War I and used to billet British soldiers and later as a discharge centre for Canadian soldiers. After World War II (when the hotel was used as offices for the British civil service) the Palace Hotel was reopened by the Hewlett family, who also ran the Spa Plaza Hotel (formerly the Buxton Hydropathic). The red neon PALACE HOTEL sign on the tower is a distinctive sight in the town.Football teams including Manchester United, Manchester City, Nottingham Forest and Southampton stayed at the Palace Hotel in the 1950s as a health resort. George Bernard Shaw, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Margaret Thatcher are some of the famous guests who stayed at the hotel. The hotel is now part of the Britannia Hotels group and it has a spa, gym, indoor pool and conference rooms.