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.
Findern County Primary School was completed in 1925 and does not appear on the 1922 OS map. It is built of red brick, part rendered, with a clay tile roof. The plan form is an inter-war variant of the linear second type. It consists of a front linear range of four classrooms with verandahs on both sides, and a second shorter range attached by a corridor to the rear. The front classroom range facing the road is single-storey, with north rooflights. On the right is a part-rendered, two-storey entrance block with a half-hipped roof. The verandah corridors have been unsympathetically filled in. The window joinery has been comprehensively replaced with UPVC. (1)
This school is a humble example of Widdows' inter-war designs, on a smaller scale. The plan form is not of particular interest and the exterior does not have distinctive architectural quality. The later enclosure of the verandah corridors has entailed the loss and permanent concealment of original fabric, and the loss of all the window joinery is significant. This school does not have special architectural or historic interest on a national level and does not fulfil the criteria for listing.
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