Darley Dale Infants School

Infants School on Greenaway Lane, Darley Dale. Built in 1911 as an Elementary School, designed by George Widdows, County Architect for Derbyshire County Council. Minor alterations made in the late 20th century.

The building is constructed of gritstone rubble, brought to courses with ashlar quoins and dressings. The roofs are mansard style, finished with Westmorland slates on the upper slopes and plain clay tiles on the lower slopes. A timber and part-glazed screen and doors were added to the rear (playground) elevation. The original plan is linear with an open verandah corridor to the rear elevation, now enclosed.

The front south-east elevation is symmetrically composed. It has 6 single storey bays and a 2-storey central bay. The two outermost bays form pavilion-like ends to the building; together with the central bay they have half-hipped mansard roofs. The 4 intermediate bays contain full height multi-paned 9-light mullioned and transomed timber window frames set beneath catslide extensions to the slated upper roof slope. Between these are sections of the steeper tiled lower roof slope which extend to the bottom eaves level. Windows in the gabled end bays are of similar design, all with 3 shallow bottom lights of inward-opening hopper type.

The rear elevation has a long mansard roof with a series of low tapered stone ridge chimneys. There is a central bay with a pair of 2-light flat-roofed dormer windows at upper eaves level. The 4 inner flanking bays each have a wide 4-light high-level window set below a shallow projection from the upper roof slope. The pavilion end bays are slightly advanced with gables whose window frames match those to their front walls. Between the projecting end bays is the formerly open verandah corridor; its braced arcade posts sit upon tall padstones and its arcade plates are now enclosed by a 20th-century screen wall of half-glazed and solid panels incorporating pairs of doors.

Interior comprises 6 classrooms linked by the enclosed verandah corridor. The end classrooms are larger than the 4 in-line classrooms; the south-west end classroom serves as the school hall. Each classroom has a chimney breast and hearth, some now infilled. The central 2-storey bay contains cloakrooms and 20th-century toilets at ground floor level, and a staff room and head teacher's study at first floor level, accessed by an enclosed stair. Original interior joinery survives, including built-in cupboard doors, and some wooden floor coverings remain.

Darley Dale Infants School was designed by architect George Widdows (1871–1946) and completed in 1911. It was one of many new Elementary schools built to Widdows' designs by the County Council, which sought to provide school facilities across Derbyshire during a period of rapid population growth in the 1890s, particularly in coal mining and textile manufacturing communities in the east of the county. Widdows arrived in Derbyshire in 1897 as Chief Architectural Assistant to Derby Corporation. Following the 1902 Education Act, when responsibility for schools passed to the County Council, Widdows was appointed architect to Derbyshire County Council's Education Committee in 1904. He became Chief Architect to the County Council in 1910, though schools remained his predominant concern. He retired in 1936, having designed approximately sixty Elementary schools and seventeen Secondary schools.

Widdows' work was at the forefront of a movement to provide schools where standards of hygiene and educational provision were equally valued. Board of Health legislation in 1907 required regular medical inspections of schools. His designs emphasised high levels of natural daylight and effective cross ventilation to improve hygiene standards within schools, characterised by generous full-height and high-level windows and open verandah-style corridors linking well-lit classrooms. Widdows developed a number of distinctive plan forms based on linear modules arranged in different configurations according to school size and site shape. The Darley Dale School was built during the evolutionary stage of Widdows' school designs between 1907 and 1914, and is one of approximately thirty-seven new designs completed by 1920, most of which, like Darley Dale, remain in educational use.