University of Derby was run by the NHS after 1948. The University of Derby purchased the then-derelict hospital from the NHS in 2001, and moved operations here from the Harpur Hill campus in 2005. The campus is also the location of Buxton & Leek College, created in August 2012 when the university merged with Leek College. Buxton & Leek College primarily offers further education courses, and has a second campus in Leek, Staffordshire. Film and video, fine art, photography, graphic design, fashion studies, and textile design were initially based at Kedleston Road before moving to the Britannia Mill site. They are now at
William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire President of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1838, a position in which he served for twenty years until his death. It was this interest which led him to establish the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew as a national botanic garden. The world's most commercially exploited banana, the Cavendish, was named in his honour. He had acquired an early specimen, which he raised in his glasshouse, and this plant is the progenitor of almost all the worldwide varieties of Cavendish banana. Devonshire was also patron of The Derby Town and County Museum and Natural History Society. In that position, he was