Springfield Junior School

Springfield Junior School

This elementary school, now a junior school, was built in 1936 and designed by George Widdows, architect to Derbyshire's Education Committee from 1904 and Chief Architect to Derbyshire County Council from 1910 to 1936. The building has undergone late 20th-century alterations.

The school is constructed of red brick with plain roof coverings and deep hipped roofs incorporating roof dormers. It is planned in a V-shape with a central hall to the west and splayed classroom wings extending eastwards.

The double-height hall forms the frontage to the site, topped with a deep hipped roof and a single chimney stack at the south end. A flat-roofed arcade passage with seven semi-circular arched openings runs across the front of the hall, though all but the two outer openings are now blocked by timber partitions, with pairs of entrance doors set within the end arches. Behind this arcade, the hall's front wall contains four tall multi-paned cross-frame windows that rise through the eaves and sit beneath hipped dormers. Low, flat-roofed entrance blocks are attached at each end of the hall, linking to the adjacent classroom ranges. The entrance doors are set deep within off-centre semi-circular arched openings flanked by multi-paned windows with inward-opening hopper lights. The classroom ranges have deep hipped roofs with north lights above their formerly-open verandah corridors. The opposing roof slopes feature two-light eaves-level hipped dormer windows. Toilet blocks sit at the end of each classroom wing, originally detached but now linked to the wings via corridor arcades. The verandahs have been enclosed by glazed screens and doors set behind the original timber arcade posts.

Inside, the hall retains wall panelling, a panelled stage with proscenium arch, and a geometrically-patterned floor in coloured glazed tiles. The ceiling is curved and pierced by the reveals of high-level windows with hopper lights. The classrooms retain original hopper windows, blackboard niches, and built-in shelving with matchboarding panels. Original glazed screen walls survive on one side of the classrooms, though they have been removed on the other side.

Widdows (1871–1946) arrived in Derbyshire in 1897 as Chief Architectural Assistant to Derby Corporation. Following the 1902 Education Act, school provision passed to Derbyshire County Council, and in 1904 Widdows was appointed architect to the Council's Education Committee. In 1910 he became Chief Architect to the Council, though schools remained his primary concern. By his retirement in 1936, he had designed approximately sixty elementary schools and seventeen secondary schools.

This building was one of the last of Widdows' elementary schools and reflects his pioneering commitment to school hygiene as central to design. Widdows worked with his Medical Officer, Sidney Barwise, and deputy architects C. A. Edeson and T. Walker to develop innovative designs featuring high levels of natural daylight and effective cross-ventilation. His neo-vernacular designs characteristically included open verandah-style corridors with generous full-height windows. He developed a distinctive linear modular planning approach that could be arranged in different configurations to suit varying school sizes and site shapes. His work was recognised by contemporaries: The Builder observed in 1913 that his designs constituted "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."