More information : Anthony Gell School was designed by the architect George H. Widdows (1871-1946). The school originally consisted only of the block to the north-west, built in 1907. It was extended in 1922, adding a new hall and two classroom blocks to form a quadrangle. 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 the 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 following 1907 legislation brought in by the Board of Health 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.
His secondary schools were larger than his elementary schools 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 form of the 1907 and 1922 ranges at Anthony Gell School remain largely unaltered. Late 20th century blocks built to the south-east are linked to the early 20th century school by two walkways.
The lower courses and ground floor to the entrances of the 1907 range are stone. Above, the walls are red brick with blue brick, tile and stone dressing and decoration. The roofs are slate with brick chimney stacks. The 1922 ranges are red brick, with the same slate roofs as the earlier range.
The final plan of 1922 is a quadrangle, with double height hall with steep hipped roof to the south-east and two classroom ranges to north-east and south-west. Each is formed of two single storey blocks, those to the north-west narrower and stepped out slightly to make the quadrangle wider at this end. A continuous verandah runs around all three sides. The 1907 range is more complex in plan with a one and a half storey central block and single storey wings to either side. There is a central forward projecting wing to the main north-west elevation flanked by two slightly advanced entrances.
The central wing and entrances form the main features of the north-west elevation, presenting a large gable flanked by two smaller gables, all with kneelers. Different shapes and sizes of windows are used to create a symmetrical design, and decorative use is made of ashlar stonework, bands of blue brick, and tile and stone diaper work. The south-east elevation of this range, facing onto the quadrangle, has advanced gables with kneelers at either end. It employs the same range of materials and decorative detail, but has a single row of windows with wooden mullions and transoms; three to each gable divided into four main lights, four to the centre (originally the hall) divided into six.
The later ranges forming the remaining three sides of the quadrangle are of plain red brick. The later hall, now the library, at the south-east end, is regular, with two double doors below the verandah and six windows above. The verandah is continuous around the three sides and is very plain, the roof supported on simple square section posts. All original windows survive, most with hopper openings.
Joined to the north corner of the 1907 range is a dislocated fragment of a covered walkway with open sides, its wide timber arches between square uprights set on stone plinths.
The 1907 range retains many original features, including glazed bricks and panelled corridor and hall. The hall is now divided into two by a partition placed where there was once a folding screen. A blocked fireplace survives in one corner. A panelled staircase rises to the attic rooms, where one glazed brick fireplace survives. Apart from their hopper window openings, the interior of the new hall, now library, and the later classrooms do not retain any notable features of historic interest.
Anthony Gell School was not designed as a whole, and about sixteen years separates the early school from the extension. In those intervening years Widdows had fully developed his innovative ideas, illustrated in the contrast between the more traditional plan of the earlier range, with classrooms to either side of a central hall, and the later development of well ventilated classrooms set around a quadrangle with open verandahs, representative of his designs for elementary schools in the inter-war years. The earlier school contains more of architectural interest in its reference to Arts and Crafts forms, and use of materials to create decorative effects. Its interior also retains some details typically found in Widdows' later schools, but it lacks the innovative plan form that would make it of special interest, and it has also suffered some alteration and loss. Also, it now forms an integral part of larger whole, harnessed to a late use of a Widdows open verandah plan, the design of which is particularly plain, and which retains few features of historic interest, except for its original windows. Despite the attempt to tie the whole together by designing the later hall to mirror the earlier hall across the quadrangle, it lacks cohesion, and is not of special architectural interest.
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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