Summary : Blackwell Primary School was completed in 1915. It replaced an older school which is visible immediately to the east on the 1900 map, is marked as 'disused' on the 1917 map, and was demolished by 1938. The school is built of red brick with stone dressings and a clay tile roof. The plan form is a variant of the type described by Widdows as 'Plan No. 3' in a paper he presented to the Royal Sanitary Institute on 25 February 1910 (third type). It has a central hall with an entrance block on each side, but instead of paired classrooms set splayed at the ends, there are single classrooms in line with the hall and pairs of classrooms at right angles to the rear. An extension has been built to the rear of the east classroom wing. The exterior is relatively plain except for the two entrances, which are handsomely framed by moulded piers with stone and blue brick banding. The window joinery has been comprehensively replaced with UPVC. |
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.
Blackwell Primary School was completed in 1915 and first appears on the OS map of 1917. It replaced an older school which is visible immediately to the east on the 1900 map, is marked as 'disused' on the 1917 map, and was demolished by 1938. The school is built of red brick with stone dressings and a clay tile roof. The plan form is a rather dull variant of the type described by Widdows as 'Plan No. 3' in a paper he presented to the Royal Sanitary Institute on 25 February 1910 (third type). It has a central hall with an entrance block on each side, but instead of paired classrooms set splayed at the ends, there are single classrooms in line with the hall and pairs of classrooms at right angles to the rear. An extension has been built to the rear of the east classroom wing. The exterior is relatively plain except for the two entrances, which are handsomely framed by moulded piers with stone and blue brick banding. The window joinery has been comprehensively replaced with UPVC.
This school is an uninteresting variant of what was otherwise an innovative and dramatic Widdows plan type. The success of his third-type plans lay in the splayed angle of the classrooms in relation to the central hall. According to Widdows himself, variants in which the classrooms lay at right angles to the hall were not as effective for cross ventilation. The building has little architectural quality other than in the entrances. It has been marred by the complete loss of the window joinery and the addition of an extension. This 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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