A chance conversation between a local author and the chair of the Friends of Buxton Station has sparked an idea for a wartime story.

Buxton author Celia Harwood was fascinated to learn details discovered by volunteer Dave Carlisle when he researched a leaflet about the Granville Canadian Special Hospital as part of the station’s programme of celebrations marking 200 years of the modern passenger railway.

Dave Carlisle, chair of the Friends of Buxton Station, said: “Celia and I met at a literary event and got chatting about the Granville Hospital. I’d unearthed some diaries written by recovering soldiers and found the day-to-day jottings compelling. They told of hopes and dreams, and looking forward to the future as we all like to do. Celia took these themes one step further in ‘Empire’s Peak’, the eighth Buxton Spa Murder Mystery.

“It’s wonderful that our station features so prominently in this work of fiction.”

Buxton Station played a vital role during World War One. As well as being the focal point in the town where soldiers left to join the fight or returned from the battlefront, the station grew in importance when the nearby Granville Canadian Red Cross Special Hospital opened on 8 November 1917, with the admission of the first forty patients.

Comprising two of the largest hotels in town, The Buxton Hydro and The Palace, the super-hospital could accommodate up to 1,100 wounded soldiers at a time. Ambulance train arrivals became a regular feature of life at Buxton Station, ferrying the war wounded into town for treatment from their physical and mental injuries.

Author Celia Harwood said: “I’m delighted to share the introduction to ‘Empire’s Peak’, the eighth Buxton Spa Mystery.

“In November 1924, a former officer of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, now a surgeon, returns on the train to Buxton Spa with fond memories of the town where he spent the last years of WW1 at the Granville Special Hospital on Terrace Road treating wounded Canadian soldiers. He has returned after six years’ absence to attend a wedding but finds a very different welcome from the one he expected.” 

‘Empire’s Peak’ can be purchased through Celia’s website, and is also available at Higher Buxton Post Office, Scrivener’s Bookshop and High Peak Bookstore & Café.”

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