More information : This school is being assessed for listing as part of an English Heritage thematic survey of the surviving schools designed by George Widdows in Derbyshire in 1906-1936. George H. Widdows (1871-1946) is nationally acknowledged as a leading and influential designer of schools in the early 20th century. He was appointed as architect to Derbyshire County Council's Education Committee in 1904, and in 1910 became Chief Architect to the Council. By the time he retired in 1936, he had designed some sixty elementary and seventeen secondary schools. Nine of these have already been listed.
Widdows responded to concerns about health and hygiene in schools by developing a series of revolutionary plan forms which introduced cross ventilation and natural daylight. His schools are characterised by open verandah corridors and large expanses of glazing, including hopper and pivot windows. There are four characteristic plans for the elementary schools built to his designs before 1914. The earliest was the 'marching corridor' type; only five schools were built to this experimental and rather expensive plan. The second type was linear in form, with a larger classroom at each end and often a freestanding hall with linking corridor to the rear. 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. Widdows' designs for elementary schools in the inter-war period were often based on a collegiate system of quadrangle plans. His secondary schools were larger ensembles and tend to have a greater architectural presence. Assessment of these schools takes into account architectural quality and the extent to which the surviving fabric represents Widdows' design innovation in a national context.
The former Ernest Bailey School is said to have been built in 1920, but it does not appear on the OS map published in 1922, so was presumably completed after the area was surveyed. It is built of random coursed rubble gritstone, with ashlar dressings and a flat roof. The plan form is H-shaped. The school is built on a sloping site, so that the front (west) elevation is two storeys high and the rear (east) elevation is three storeys. The central section of the front elevation is five bays wide and is ashlar-faced, with pilasters between the windows. The projecting blocks to either side are of random coursed rubble. The building has been altered and extended on this side to connect it to the other buildings used by Derbyshire Records Office. The window joinery survives intact but the interior is likely to have sustained losses due to the change of use from school to records office.
This school is an atypical example of the work of George Widdows in the inter-war period. The plan form appears to have been dictated by the cramped and sloping nature of the site, and there is none of Widdows' typical attention to cross-ventilation. While the school displays some definite architectural quality in the handling of the stone, the design is quite severe, with large expanses of blank stone. There have been some alterations and the interior is unlikely to retain many features due to the conversion to institutional use. This former school does not have special architectural or historic interest on a national level and does not fulfil the criteria for listing. (1)
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