Devonshire estate architect, Henry Currey, architect for St Thomas’s Hospital in London, converted two thirds of the building into a hospital. Then, in 1878, the Buxton Bath Charity trustees under their doughty chairman Dr William Henry Robertson, persuaded the 7th Duke of Devonshire to give them the use of the whole building in exchange for providing new stables elsewhere in the town. Robert Rippon Duke was commissioned to design a 300-bed hospital to rival Bath and Harrogate for charity medical provision. The Cotton Districts Convalescent fund put up £25,000 for the conversion. Rippon Duke included in his design what was then the world's largest unsupported dome; a vast steel construction clad in slate and comprising 22 curved steel arms. This figure was revised upwards following advice from a railway engineer, Mr Footner, in the 1870s, who retold an account of the Tay Bridge disaster (which collapsed because its structure had not taken into account the stresses of lateral wind and storms). After Rippon Duke's redevelopment in 1881, the Devonshire Hospital had the largest dome in the world at in diameter. This exceeded the Pantheon (43m) and St Peter's Basilica (42m) in Rome, and St Paul's Cathedral (34m). The Devonshire Dome and its surrounding Victorian villas are now the Devonshire Campus - a faculty of the University of Derby. Duke designed the Poole's Cavern Lodge in 1852. He designed Fairfield Wesleyan Chapel in 1868, Trinity Episcopal Church on Hardwick Mount in 1872 and the Burlington Hotel (subsequently The Savoy) at the bottom of Hall Bank in 1874. In the 1860s and 1870s Robert Rippon Duke designed grand Victorian Villas along Cavendish Terrace (now called Broad Walk), Thorncliffe Cottage on Hartington Road, Spring Bank and The Knoll on Marlborough Road and Hamilton and Arnside villas on Devonshire Road. He designed Turner's Memorial drinking fountain in 1879 (in memory of his colleague and friend Samuel Turner), which stands in front of the Hot Baths on Terrace Road. Duke was the Clerk of Works for the Palace Hotel (designed by Henry Currey) and he was the architect for its extensions in 1887. He also designed the Post Office at Cavendish Circus. R. R. Duke's own building company also built St Anne's Roman Catholic Church on Terrace Road in 1861 and the Congregational Church on Hardwick Mount in 1861 (demolished in 1983). References 1817 births 1909 deaths Architects from Kingston upon Hull People from Buxton