During the First World War over 1,000 Canadian soldiers arrived in the town via ambulance trains at Buxton railway station. Brighton, where solders had been treated initially, was considered by the Canadian War Office to be too much of a target, so Buxton was chosen instead as ‘the safest place in England’.
Buxton Hydro served as the main treatment centre, but many other buildings around town were also used as Discharge Depots including the Empire Hotel (now demolished) and the Peak Hydropathic (now Buxton Museum and Art Gallery).