Buxton Local History Society

“Blue Plaques.”

2. Robert Ripon Duke – 1817 – 1909.

Born in Hull, the son of a cooper on a whaling ship, his only formal training was an apprenticeship as a carpenter, but he excelled in drawing and, was eager to learn. He prospered, and in a very Victorian way, rose to be “The Architect of Victorian Buxton”.
RRD came to Buxton in 1849, for his health and to supervise Samuel Worth’s project building the Royal Hotel in Spring Gardens. He formed a building company in partnership with Samuel Turner which was successful but dissolved in 1858 when Turner took a post with the Devonshire Buxton Estate. RRD concentrated on architecture and supervising construction of his own, and others, designs from then on, much of his work also being for the Devonshire Buxton Estate.

RRD was responsible for the Burlington Hotel at the bottom of Hall Bank, now the Savoy flats; the Octagon at the western end of the Pavilion; Trinity Church and the now demolished Congregational church, both on Hardwick Mount; and many other properties and private houses; but his greatest work was the dome on the Devonshire Hospital. The building was originally a 120-horse stable but in 1858 the Duke of Devonshire gave 2/3rd for conversion to accommodation for Bath Charity’s patients, and in 1879 agreed to relinquish the whole building on condition they provided alternative stabling for the hotels in the Crescent. The huge open space in the middle posed a problem, so RRD proposed the dome, a wrought iron framework clad with slate tiles, completed in 1881, thus producing the unique and iconic structure.