The two-story building was built in Georgian Revival style, and boasted a single schoolroom on the first floor, as well as six rooms for the teacher, their family, and student boarders from other parts of Vancouver Island. A large brick fireplace, as well as a stove, provided heating for the building, and a bell salvaged from the wrecked steamship "Major Tompkins" was hung in the yard to call students to class. Initially, the school was accessible from the main part of the farm only by boat, but the 1856 completion of the first Craigflower bridge linked the two parts of the farm together.