South East Derbyshire College

This secondary school, now a college, was completed in 1912 to designs by George Widdows, who served as architect to Derbyshire's Education Committee from 1904 and as Chief Architect to Derbyshire County Council from 1910 to 1936. A late 20th-century extension has been added to the rear.

The building is constructed of red brick with gauged brick, blue brick and stone dressings. It has a hipped plain tile roof with brick ridge stacks and moulded timber cornices.

The plan features a central full-height four-bay hall flanked by advanced eight-bay wings: the west wing has two storeys, while the east wing has two storeys and a basement. These front wings are balanced by corresponding wings to the rear. A modern extension links to the north elevation.

Exterior

Steps lead up to a terrace at the front of the main hall, positioned between the two advanced wings. The hall's four tall windows are separated by pilasters with blue brick quoins, each topped with a timber capital. On either side of the hall are 18th-century-style hopper heads inscribed 'HSC 1911'. The windows are subdivided by timber mullions and transoms into nine main lights, with the central light featuring a small pediment; each light contains smaller leaded panes. The windows sit beneath flat gauged brick arches and have moulded stone cills. Above each window is a semi-circular headed dormer containing a circular leaded light. At the centre of the ridge sits an octagonal bellcote with leaded base, arcaded sides and a domed copper roof.

Flanking the hall, between it and the side wings, are advanced canted bays with flat roofs. Each has a pedimented Tuscan doorcase facing onto the terrace with recessed half-glazed double doors. Above each doorcase is a three-light timber mullioned window beneath a flat gauged brick arch. The canted sides feature single-light similar windows on both ground and first floors. Both wings have clasping corner pilaster strips with blue brick quoining. The east wing has nine-paned windows to the basement, and both wings have fifteen-paned double-transomed windows to ground and first floors—eight to each floor in the south elevations and three to the north. All these windows have flat brick arches with stone keyblocks. The east and west elevations have similar windows. The rear wings are lower, with hipped roofs featuring semi-circular headed dormers with circular windows.

Interior

The interior has panelled corridors and plain classrooms. The bottom three lights of the classroom windows form hopper-style openings. The central hall is surrounded by corridors on three sides, with stairs at either end leading to the first floor. The ground floor corridors have polished parquet floors and picture rail height panelling, with half-glazed double doors featuring overlights containing stained glass. The panelled stairs rise to the upper corridors, which have dado height panelling and enclose the hall as a gallery with openings supported on either side by short Tuscan columns.

The hall has an arched ceiling lit by circular dormer windows, divided by panelled ribs above a projecting moulded cornice. There is a decorative central ceiling boss. Each bay is separated by a pilaster with similar recessed panel to the ceiling ribs. The centre pane of the two central windows contains a figure in stained glass representing Science and Literature respectively. At the west end is a three-panelled mural painted by Frederick Cayley Robinson in 1925, which incorporates the names of those who died in the First World War as part of the design. Temporary partitions subdivide the ground floor level of the hall.

Historical Context

The building was designed by architect George H. Widdows (1871-1946) and 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 experienced the country's greatest percentage population increase in the 1890s, largely due to the growth of 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, and in 1910 he became Chief Architect to the Council, though schools remained his principal concern. By his retirement 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 introduced legislation requiring schools to undergo regular medical inspections. Widdows worked with his Medical Officer, Sidney Barwise, and two deputy architects, C. A. Edeson and T. Walker, to develop innovative designs introducing high levels of natural daylight and effective cross-ventilation in schools. 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 school's plan is more traditional than those designs employing open verandah-style corridors to link classrooms, but it does have Widdows' characteristic full-height windows with hopper-style openings.

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 mural in the school hall was painted as a war memorial around 1925 by Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862-1927), painter, illustrator, theatre designer and decorator.

The modern extension to the north, creating a new entrance, is not of special architectural interest.

Subsidiary Features

The terrace at the front of the school is enclosed by a low brick wall running between the two wings. At the centre is a cast iron gate between square brick piers, from which a short flight of steps descends to the lower level.