Description: The Crescent was built between 1780 and 1784 by John Carr of York, for the 5th Duke of Devonshire. The Duke paid £120000 (paid from profits of the Duke's copper mine at Ecton). The building contains a fine Adam style Assembly Room, beautifully restored by Derbyshire County Council, with the original chandeliers in position. It is now used as a study library. 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.