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St Anne's Church,
Bath Road, SK17 6HJ,
Buxton, Derbyshire.

Cemeteries

This Church has (or had) a graveyard.

Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded in 1625, and we understand it is still open.

This building was the old parochial chapel of Buxton, formerly dedicated to St John the Evangelist, but it became disused in 1812, following the erection of St John the Baptist church the previous year. According to Derbyshire Record Office's catalogue of Church of England Registers however, it was reconsecrated in 1895 as chapel of ease to St John the Baptist, and then rededicated to St Anne.

Bulmer's Directory of 1895, possibly prior to its rededication to St Anne, records that it was dedicated to "St John, not St Anne, lest some memory of the superstitions that had enshrined themselves within the old chapel of that name might attach to this". It has been twice restored, and has at different times served the purpose of day school, Sunday school, and mortuary chapel. It is a rectangular building, "of no characteristic style of architecture, and possesses no noticeable features either within or without". The windows are square-headed and filled with plain glass, except one on the east wall, which exhibits the Stations of the Cross. A handsomely carved oak reading desk, of 17th century workmanship, is worthy of observation. On the walls are several plain memorial tablets, the most ancient being to William Wallace, who died in 1788. In 1715 a vestry was added to the south-east gable of the chapel. At the time of Bulmer's account (1895), it was supported solely by the offertories and collections. The curate-in-charge at the time was the Rev. Gerard Walker Palmer, M.A.

St Anne's is lovingly described on the Parish of Buxton with Burbage and King Sterndale website - "a beautiful and historic church, possibly the oldest building in Buxton. Its ornate interior is a wonderful testimony to its Anglo-Catholic traditional past". A date of 1625 is carved on the church porch, but J. Charles Cox, in Notes on the churches of Derbyshire Vol 2, avers that "we have little doubt that there was a Christian chapel here at the time of Archbishop Peckham's Visitation in 1280", although "it is not to be expected that any mention of this chapel would be found earlier than the sixteenth century, for it had no special emoluments or value attached to it. Probably the chapel of St. Anne of Buxton was merely one of those "well-chapels" of which there are numerous ruinous instances in Wales and Cornwall".

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

If more than one congregation has worshipped here, or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Church is located at OS grid reference SK0572272979. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• St Anne's Church, Buxton shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Buxton shown on a Google Map.
• Streetmap.co.uk (arrow on map shows the Place of Worship's location) (verified 2018-10-15)
• Bing (Ordnance Survey option) (verified 2018-10-13)
• Bing Maps ('Bird's Eye' View) (verified 2018-10-15)
• Ordnance Survey "getamap" (NB some of the 'Change Map' options may require a subscription) (verified 2018-10-15)
• OpenStreetMap (Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA) (verified 2018-10-15)
• A Vision of Britain Through Time - useful for Boundary Changes (verified 2018-10-15)
• www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays) (verified 2018-10-15)

Resources

I have found many websites of use whilst compiling the information for this database. Here are some which deserve mention as being of special interest for Buxton, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• You may want to visit Parish of Buxton with Burbage and King Sterndale website for present-day information.

The above links were selected and reviewed at the time I prepared the information, but please be aware their content may vary, or disappear entirely. These factors are outside my control.