[4] In 1879, the Buxton Bath Charity trustees persuaded William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire to give them the use of the whole building in exchange for providing new stables elsewhere in the town.

Local architect Robert Rippon Duke was commissioned to design a hospital to rival Bath's and Harrogate's facilities for charity medical care.

[2] Further changes were undertaken, with the clock tower (a tribute to the hospital's chairman Dr William Henry Robertson) and lodge completed in 1882, the Jubilee surgical wards in 1897 and the dining room and kitchens extension in 1921.

[4] Vera Brittain (author of Testament of Youth) trained as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at the Devonshire Hospital in 1915, caring for soldiers wounded during World War I.

[3] The Buxton Bath Charity was incorporated into the National Health Service in 1948 and from then the Devonshire Royal Hospital provided treatments for acute conditions, rheumatism and allied diseases, orthopaedics and rehabilitation.