| Summary : Langley Mill Infants School is said to have been built in 1907, and was certainly completed by 1910. It is constructed of red brick, with a clay tile roof. The plan form is a variant of George H Widdows' linear second type, described by Widdows as 'Plan No. 2' in a paper he presented to the Royal Sanitary Institute on 25 February 1910. This plan had a linear range of four classrooms (with a larger classroom at each end), and a freestanding block of two further classrooms to the rear, linked by a central hall with verandahs on either side. At Langley Mill a massive extension was added to the west in 2008. The exterior is quite plain, with three projecting gables to the front with some rendered detailing. |
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.
Langley Mill Infants School is said to have been built in 1907, and was certainly completed by 1910. It first appears on the OS map of 1916. It is constructed of red brick, with a clay tile roof. The plan form is a variant of the linear second type, described by Widdows as 'Plan No. 2' in a paper he presented to the Royal Sanitary Institute on 25 February 1910. This plan had a linear range of four classrooms (with a larger classroom at each end), and a freestanding block of two further classrooms to the rear, linked by a central hall with verandahs on either side. At Langley Mill a massive extension was added to the west in 2008. The exterior is quite plain, with three projecting gables to the front with some rendered detailing.
This school is an early version of Widdows' second plan type. The original plan form is still legible, however the extension attached to the west detracts from the external appearance of the school and has broken through original fabric. Additionally all the external joinery has been replaced with UPVC components, and there have been significant levels of alteration to the buildings' interior. This early Widdows school is illustrative of the characteristic architecture of Widdows' pre-1914 designs, but is plain in design and now too altered to justify a listing recommendation. (1)
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