More information : Wirksworth Junior 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. The 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 was more standardised. It was linear in form, with a larger classroom at each end, and often 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.
Widdows' designs for elementary schools in the inter-war period were often based on a collegiate system of quadrangle plans, with open verandah corridors, north lights and south dormer windows. His secondary schools were larger and had a greater variety of rooms, with sizeable assembly halls, laboratories and art rooms as well as classrooms. These larger ensembles tend to have a greater architectural presence resulting from their size and the complexity of their plan forms.
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 plan of Wirksworth Junior School is illustrated in this article.
There is now a flat roofed cloakroom block to the east, between the north-east and south-east wings, enclosing the once open verandah. The 1922 OS map shows some sort of structure here, but indicates that the verandah was still open.
The school is built of red brick laid in English garden wall bond, rendered and painted above cill level, with tile dressings and tiled roofs and brick chimneys. It has a butterfly plan, with a central octagonal hall and four wings, each with a cross wing at the end with slightly advanced gables facing inwards. It is designed in the Arts and Crafts style, with steeply pitched roofs and low eaves, its roofline broken by dormers with hipped roofs. The opposing V shaped elevations to the north and south are the same. The once open three arched arcades to both south-east and north-east facing elevations are now glazed, while to the east the single storey cloakroom block encloses and conceals from the outside the verandah and its wooden uprights, but all detail survives otherwise intact. Contrasting materials; tile, brick, and wood, are used to decorative effect, with detail focussed on the gable ends of each wing. All windows retain their original openings, including hopper openings to the lower panes. Some original cast iron rainwater heads survive.
At the centre of the building is the school hall, octagonal at ground floor level and cruciform above. Four wide arches are supported on square piers rising between the first floor level paired windows at the corners of the wings. Corridors, originally open to one side, lead from the hall to the classrooms. The verandah to the east, enclosed by the later cloakroom block, retains its octagonal wooden posts rising from octagonal concrete bases, as well as the now internal windows and exposed brickwork. The two east wings contain two classrooms (that to the north now a kitchen) while those to the west have a classroom at the end, and offices where there were originally cloakrooms and lavatories. These retain their glazed bricks to dado height, and in the classrooms most original features survive, including built in cupboards and glazed brick fireplace surrounds (painted over). The upper staffrooms contain built in cupboards and shelves.
Internally, both plan form and detail survive well. Although inevitably some spaces have changed use, for example the cloakrooms, they have retained original features, and in the classrooms functional details have survived well, including the hopper openings to windows.
SOURCES
G. H. Widdows, 'Derbyshire Elementary Schools: Principles of Planning', paper presented to Royal Sanitary Institute on 25 February 1910, in Royal Sanitary Institute Journal (1910), 92-116.
'The Derbyshire Schools', The Builder, Vol. 105 (31 October 1913), 460-461.
The Builder, Vol. 107 (10 July 1914), 44-45; (17 July 1914), 74-75.
G. H. Widdows, 'School Design', RIBA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 (26 November 1921), 33-45. (1)
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