Listed Building: SPRINGFIELD JUNIOR SCHOOL (1393321)

Elementary school, now a Junior school. 1936 with late C20 alterations. Designed by George Widdows, architect to Derbyshire's Education Committee from 1904 and Chief Architect to Derbyshire County Council in 1910-1936. MATERIALS: Red brick with plain coverings to deep hipped roofs and roof dormers. PLAN: V-shaped plan with a central hall to the west, behind which splayed classroom wings extend eastwards. EXTERIOR: The double-height hall range forms the frontage range to the site, and has a deep hipped roof with a single chimney stack to the hip roof pitch at the south end. To the front of the hall is a flat-roofed arcade passage with 7 semi-circular arched openings, all but the 2 outer openings now blocked by timber partitions. Pairs of entrance doors to the hall are set within the end arches. Behind this arcade is the front wall of the hall, with 4 tall windows, their cross frames with multiple panes. The windows rise through the eaves and are set beneath hipped dormers. Attached at each end of the hall are low, flat-roofed entrance blocks which extend to link with the adjacent classroom ranges. The entrance doors are set deep within an off-centre semi-circular arched opening flanked by multi-paned windows with inward opening hopper lights. The classroom ranges have deep, hipped roofs with north lights above the formerly-open verandah corridors to their frontages. On the opposing roof slopes are 2-light eaves level hipped dormer windows. At the end of each classroom wing is a toilet block, originally detached, and around which the corridor arcades have been carried. These blocks have now been linked to the classroom wings. The verandahs have now been enclosed by glazed screens and doors which are set behind the original timber arcade posts. INTERIOR: The hall retains wall panelling, a panelled stage with proscenium and a geometrically-patterned floor in coloured glazed tiles. The ceiling is curved and punctured by the reveals of its high level windows with hopper lights. The classrooms retain original hopper windows, blackboard niches and built-in shelving with matchboarding panels behind. Original glazed screen walls are retained on one side of the classrooms, but have been removed on the other. HISTORY: Springfield Infants School was designed by the architect George H. Widdows (1871-1946), and was completed in 1936. It was one of the last of his elementary schools. It was one of a large number of new schools built to Widdows' designs by Derbyshire County Council in the early C20. 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. The advances Widdows made in school planning were quickly 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.' 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. Springfield Junior School is considered to be of special architectural interest for the following principal reasons: * It is a notable example of the work of George Widdows, who is nationally acknowledged as a leading designer of schools in the early C20 and an exponent of advanced ideas on school planning and hygiene. * This school remains a strongly representative example of an evolved Widdows' design in which classroom wings with verandah corridors are combined with a central hall in a V-shaped configuration. The original plan has suffered little significant alteration and remains clearly legible. * The school retains most of the notable elements of its original design. The later enclosure of the verandah corridors has been carefully handled and has not resulted in the significant loss or permanent concealment of original fabric. * The exterior is of distinctive architectural quality, with the various component elements arranged in a carefully-proportioned ensemble of well-finished brick buildings. * The interior retains a number of original fixtures and fittings of special interest, including panelling, verandah arcading and hopper windows, all highly characteristic of Widdows' designs.