HIGH DRAMA

and an On the trail of two Tudor women-a headstrong queen enterprising countess-NINA CAPLAN explores England's Peak District, where the rugged landscape becomes a portal to the past.

- NINA CAPLAN

ACROSS THE STREET from the great curve of golden sandstone that is Buxton Crescent, against a backdrop of tiered gardens rising toward a war monument, sits a small stone fountain: not the kind that cascades, but the kind you drink from. St. Ann's Well is so understated, so overshadowed by the crescent's astonishing 18th century façade, that I'd spent 24 hours in the town before I noticed it and that was only because people kept approaching to fill their containers.

The contrasting size and impact of these two stone structures is misleading, because the Crescent, which reopened as the 81-room hotel Buxton Crescent in October 2020 after a mammoth $80 million (around 660 crores) restoration, would not be there without St. Ann's Well, part of the natural thermal springs bubbling unseen beneath visitors' feet. Rainwater spends 5,000 years trickling through subterranean heat, then emerges at 80 degrees with, apparently, marvelous rejuvenating properties.

I thought I had come to Buxton, a town 40 kilometres southeast of Manchester, in the county of Derbyshire, to travel five centuries back in timenot five millennia. I have long been fascinated by a number of Tudor women who spent time there, including an imprisoned queen and a powerful countess. But it turns out that this health-giving water, renowned since at least Roman times, trickles through everything. England would not be England without it.