Shirebrook Model Village Primary School (Eastern Blocks)

Shirebrook Model Village Primary School (Eastern blocks)

This primary school was built in 1908 as an elementary school on Church Drive (also known as Central Drive) in Shirebrook. It was designed by George Widdows, architect to Derbyshire's Education Committee from 1904 and Chief Architect to Derbyshire County Council from 1910 to 1936.

The school is constructed of red brick laid to Flemish bond with plain red tile roof coverings and tall side wall chimney stacks.

The design represents an early example of Widdows' distinctive 'marching corridor' plan type. The school comprises two parallel single-storey building ranges aligned north-south, each with a central spine corridor and classroom crosswings to both ends and to the centre. The ranges feature advanced gabled wings to each side of set-back central corridors. Each gable contains three high-level two-light windows, with the central opening taller and set within a semi-circular arch-headed recess. Above this are three slit breathers within the gable apex. Low-level flat-roofed three-light dormers are set at high level within the roof pitches, which originally extended over short three-bay open verandah corridors accessed from the classroom areas and central corridor. The verandahs to the street frontage range have been removed, though elsewhere they survive in original form or have been enclosed within added external walls. Verandah arcade posts stand on tall padstones with miniature curved braces at their heads. Access from central corridors to verandahs was via three double doorways to each side, some retaining original joinery. End elevations feature a wide central gable flanked by tall chimneys and two tall classroom windows. Entrance double doors are set back within the gables on brackets supporting deep flat canopies.

Internally, the central corridors pass through crosswings to double doorways leading to original cloakrooms, now with added toilet area crosswings. The corridors have arch-braced roof trusses with dormer window reveals at high level. Where corridors extend into crosswings, surviving upper sections of original glazed screens serve the central classrooms, with some doorways now partially infilled. Central classrooms contain wide arch-braced trusses, three-light windows with low-level hopper lights, and fireplaces either side of the opening to the central corridor. Each end crosswing contains a first-floor staff room accessed by a winder stair.

Widdows arrived in Derbyshire in 1897 as Chief Architectural Assistant to Derby Corporation. Following the 1902 Education Act, responsibility for schools passed to Derbyshire County Council, which appointed Widdows architect to its Education Committee in 1904. Derbyshire had experienced the country's greatest percentage population increase in the 1890s, driven by growth in coal mining and textile manufacturing communities in the county's east. By the time Widdows retired in 1936, he had designed approximately sixty elementary schools and seventeen secondary schools.

Widdows was at the forefront of the movement to integrate high standards of school hygiene with 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. Working with his Medical Officer Sidney Barwise and deputy architects C. A. Edeson and T. Walker, Widdows developed innovative designs introducing high levels of natural daylight and effective cross ventilation. His neo-vernacular designs were characterised by open verandah-style corridors linking classrooms with generous full-height windows. His distinctive and influential plan forms used a linear module that could be arranged in different configurations to suit school size and site shape.

The Builder magazine recognised his advances in school planning in an article on provincial school building in 1913, stating 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 school has undergone minor late twentieth-century alterations and some internal remodelling, but the original plan form remains clearly legible, with most notable elements of the original design retained.