Hope Primary School

Hope Primary School

A primary school built in 1912, formerly an elementary school. 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 building has undergone minor late 20th-century alterations.

The school is constructed from uncoursed polygonal rubble gritstone with ashlar dressings. It has a mansard roof with ridge chimneys and a plain tile roof covering, with flat-roofed dormer windows.

The building follows a linear plan with shallow crosswings at either end of a central classroom range. It is single-storied except for the eastern crosswing, which has an upper floor containing a staff room and head teacher's study.

The south-facing street elevation features advanced end gables. The western gable displays a large shallow arch-headed 9-light window flanked by smaller multi-paned windows. The eastern gable has two tall 3-light ground floor windows and a smaller upper floor window, all with shallow-arched heads. Between the gables are four tall 9-light windows that rise through the eaves line to form flat-headed projections from the lower part of the mansard roof. Sections of the lower roof slope project between these windows. The school is entered from the playground at the rear through a pair of semi-circular arch-headed double doorways at the east end gable.

A corridor links the classrooms in the central range with the crosswing ends. Originally open, the corridor now comprises a low stone wall topped with a series of 2-light windows set between short timber posts to form a glazed screen. Above the corridor are four 3-light flat-roofed dormer windows providing high-level lighting to the classrooms.

The link corridor runs along the fronts of the classrooms and has a doorway at the west end leading into the large classroom in the west crosswing. The classrooms are lit by full-height south-facing windows to the street elevation and by high-level dormer windows, the former fitted with hopper lights. There are also multi-light windows with glazing bars opening onto the corridor, now externally covered by display boards. At the east end of the corridor is an access stair to the upper floor staff room and head teacher's room. These areas retain original door and cupboard joinery and continue to be used for their original purposes.

George H. Widdows (1871–1946) designed the school and completed it in 1912. It was one of a large number of new schools built to his designs by Derbyshire County Council in the early 20th century. Derbyshire had experienced the greatest percentage increase in population in the country during the 1890s, particularly due to growth in coal mining and textile manufacturing communities in the east of the county. Widdows came to Derbyshire in 1897 as Chief Architectural Assistant to Derby Corporation. Following the 1902 Education Act, school provision 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, though schools remained his predominant concern. By the time he retired in 1936, he had designed approximately sixty elementary schools 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 be 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 often characterised, as at Hope, 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 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.'