St John's Church was built in 1811 by the 5th and 6th Dukes of Devonshire primarily to serve those who came to partake of Buxton's famous spa waters for their health. The architect was John White, who had already designed other parts of the new spa town. Building during the neo-Classical revival, he designed the church in the Tuscan style. It was part of the parish of Bakewell until 1898 when it became a parish in its own right. The church contains 'one of the finest organs in Derbyshire' and the finest outside London to be built with electrical controls, allowing the separation of console in the nave from pipes in the new sanctuary. There are four Kempe windows: at the east end a Calvary set against his distinctive blue; a St Michael in the south side war memorial chapel; and on the north side the martyrs Stephen and Lawrence. (information from www.openchurchestrust.org.uk) The photographer was Sir William Boyd Dawkins( 1837-1929), English geologist and archaeologist. He was a member (1861-69) of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, curator (1870-90) of the Manchester Museum, and professor of geology (from 1872) at Owens College (now Victoria Univ.), Manchester. Noted for his research on fossil mammals and on the antiquity of man, he wrote Cave Hunting (1874) and Early Man in Britain (1880) and was co-author of The British Pleistocene Mammalia (6 vol., 1866-1912). In 1919 he was knighted.