| Summary : Hope Primary School was designed by George H Widdows and was completed in 1912. It was one of a large number of new schools built to Widdows' designs by Derbyshire County Council in the early 20th century. Widdows' pre-1914 elementary schools can be broadly divided into four plan types, the second type was linear in form, on which the design for Hope School was based. The school is built of rubble gritstone and has a mansard roof with a plain red tile roof covering, and ridge chimney stacks which served the original classroom fireplaces. The plan has a main central classroom range with shorth crosswings at either end. The school is single storey apart from the east crosswing which has an upper floor with a small staff room and head teacher's study. The crosswings on the north facing side are linked by a corridor. In all Widdows' plan type the corridors were designed to be open, so it is likely that hte glazing is a more recent addition. The itnerior is little altered retaining hopper lights, classroom hearths and high-level dormer windows. Listed Grade II (Listed Building Number 506436). |
More information : Hope Primary School was designed by the architect George H. Widdows (1871-1946) and was completed in 1912. It was one of a large number of new schools built to Widdows' designs by Derbyshire County Council in the early 20th century. Derbyshire had the greatest percentage increase in population in the country in the 1890s, particularly due to the growth of the coal mining and textile manufacturing communities in the east of the county. Widdows had come to Derbyshire in 1897 as Chief Architectural Assistant to Derby Corporation. Following the 1902 Education Act, responsibility for schools in the county passed to Derbyshire County Council. In 1904 Widdows was appointed architect to the Council's Education Committee. In 1910 he was appointed Chief Architect to the Council, although schools remained his predominant concern. By the time he retired in 1936, he had designed some sixty elementary and seventeen secondary schools.
Widdows was at the forefront of the movement to build schools in which high standards of hygiene were as important as educational provision. The first major conference on school hygiene was held in 1904, and in 1907 the Board of Health brought in legislation which required schools to become subject to regular medical inspections. Widdows worked with his Medical Officer, Sidney Barwise, and two deputy architects, C. A. Edeson and T. Walker, to develop a series of innovative designs introducing high levels of natural daylight and effective cross ventilation in schools. His designs, in a neo-vernacular style, were characterised by open verandah-style corridors linking classrooms with generous full-height windows. His distinctive and influential plan forms were based on a linear module which could be arranged in different configurations to suit the size of school required and the shape of the available site. This was a significant move away from the standard Board School plan introduced by E. R. Robson, with its central assembly hall and classrooms to three sides.
Widdows' pre-1914 elementary schools can be broadly divided into four plan types. The earliest was the 'marching corridor' type, with corridors wide enough for boys to perform drill. This concern over the physical fitness of schoolchildren emanated from the Boer War of 1899-1902, when over a third of the men called up to fight were found to be physically unfit. Only five schools were built to this experimental and rather expensive plan. The second type, on which the design for the Hope school was based, was more standardised. It was linear in form, with a larger classroom at each end, sometimes with a freestanding hall with linking corridor to the rear. The earliest examples of this type date from around 1910-11. The third type was the most dramatic, a butterfly-shaped plan with pairs of classrooms leading from the corners of a central hall. The fourth type was designed for irregularly-shaped sites and had a corner hall, octagonal in plan.
The advances Widdows made in school planning were recognised by his contemporaries. In an article on provincial school building in 1913, The Builder stated that his work 'constitutes a revolution in the planning and arrangement of school buildings... a real advance which places English school architecture without a rival in any European country or the United States.' The majority of Widdows' designs were for new schools in the east of the county, where new industrial communities had developed rapidly at the end of the C19. However, a small number of schools were developed further west in the established selttlements such as Hope, Buxton and Tideswell, and were built in locally-quarried gritstone, which despite their being of the same plan-form 'family', gives them a quite different appearance to their eastern brick-built counterparts.
Hope Primary School is the smallest of the schools assessed as part of the thematic listing survey. It is built of rubble gritstone and has a mansard roof with a plain red tile roof covering, and ridge chimney stacks which served the original classroom fireplaces. It is linear on plan, with short crosswings at either end of the main central classroom range. The school is single storied throughout, apart from the east crosswing, which has an upper floor with a small staff room and head teacher's study accessed from a staircase off the main corridor. The street elevation has a half-hipped gable to the west end and a full gable to the east end, and between these are tall multi-paned classroom windows which rise through the eaves, and between which sections of the lower roof slope project. The north-facing playground elevation is of a quite different appearance, with the crosswing gables linked by a flat-roofed corridor, above which are located flat -roofed dormer windows. The corridor is enclosed by a low stone wall, above which are a series of two-light windows set between short timber posts to form a glazed upper screen to the corridor. In all of the Widdows' plan types, the corridors were designed to be open, and thus the glazed upper areas are presumed to be additions. The corridor is accessed by means of a pair of semi-circular arch headed openings to the east crosswing, which now have been fitted with half-glazed double doors. Original classroom interiors have undergone modification to provide integral toilet facilities, replacing former external toilets located in a separate external toilet block, now enlarged and converted to form a classroom, and not of special interest. The other classroom areas are little altered, with characteristic Widdows' style window joinery incorporating hopper lights, classroom hearths and high-level dormer windows. The staff room and head teacher's room retain plainly detailed cupboards and doors, and a blocked hearth.
Hope Primary School is of special architectural interest in a national context and is recommended for Listing at Grade II. (1) |