[1] In 2020, following a multi-year restoration and redevelopment project supported by the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Derbyshire County Council, The Crescent was reopened as a 5-star spa hotel.

[4][5][6] Originally detached, the Crescent is now the centrepiece of an attached range of significant Georgian architecture facing The Slopes,[4] flanked on either side by the Grade-II-listed Buxton Baths, built by architect Henry Currey.

[8] The Thermal Baths, closed in 1963 and at risk of demolition, underwent a major restoration led by conservation architects Latham & Company, with British artist Brian Clarke commissioned to contribute to the refurbishment;[9] his scheme, designed in 1984 and completed in 1987, was for a modern stained-glass artwork to enclose the former baths, creating an atrial space for the Cavendish Arcade, a complex of covered, independent shops.

At the time of its creation the largest stained-glass window in Britain, the landmark[10] barrel-vaulted ceiling echoes the shape of the Crescent and adjacent Colonnade, a row of shops with a projecting canopy also by Currey.

[13] The Crescent was built for William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire, as part of his scheme to establish Buxton as a fashionable Georgian spa town.

[16] In 1993 with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund the High Peak Borough Council purchased the Crescent to act as a temporary caretaker of the building until a suitable buyer could be found.

In December 2000 the combined councils applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund to help finance plans to restore the Crescent as a hotel and to build new spa facilities.

[20] Phase one work on the then £35 million project for a 79-bedroom 5-star hotel, natural baths, a visitor interpretation centre, a thermal mineral water spa and specialist shops commenced in the summer of 2012.