In 1919, Edward F O'Neill became Head teacher of Prestolee County Elementary School near Bolton in Lancashire. This was a regular state school taking children between the ages of 5 and 14 from a community, the majority of whom were mill and factory workers. O'Neill himself was a Salford lad who had received little more than an elementary education. Between 1919 and the early 1950s, O'Neill conducted an extraordinary experiment in education. 'Learning by Doing' was the guiding principle which transformed the built environment and landscape of the school and in so doing challenged all of the preconceptions about school organization and pedagogy. In 1952, when O'Neill's story was told in a book entitled 'The Idiot Teacher', the author, Gerard A. Holmes noted, 'it seems that the time is not inappropriate for telling the story of one man who, during the past thirty years, has patiently and courageously brought into being a school in which children are able to develop their innate characteristics - trustfulness, truthfulness, helpfulness, discovery, activity, initiative, concentration, gregariousness - and grow into well informed, conscientious, resourceful companions'. This paper will argue that the time is once again appropriate to tell the story of this extraordinary school within the contemporary context of building classrooms and schools of the future.The paper will draw from an archive of visual and textual material including film, photographs, letters, personal testimony and published articles. It will seek to demonstrate how only a teacher's appreciation of the significance of the built environment and the material culture of schooling coupled with an understanding of the child as an innovator, constructor and researcher of their own world can bring about pedagogical transformation within schools.