Buxton is the highest market town in England, sitting at over a thousand feet on the White Peak limestone plateau. Its Georgian spa architecture, built by the Dukes of Devonshire around the town’s thermal springs, gives it an incongruous elegance for such an exposed location. The springs themselves attracted Roman settlement long before the Devonshires arrived, which puts the town’s history on a longer footing than its buildings suggest.

Its ghost tradition draws on both the Georgian fabric and the older ground beneath it. Accounts are spread across a range of building types and periods, with the spa quarter and the town’s older commercial streets providing the main focus. Some of the better-known accounts are well-attested and worth examining on their own terms.