What gives it away is the unusual arrangement of its six-bay front, with doors placed at opposite ends of the facade rather than at the centre, a layout that reflects the practical demands of a working schoolroom rather than any domestic convention.

The building appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, labelled as 'Cannaway Natl. School Ho.', which places it among the early wave of national schools established after the Irish national school system was founded in 1831. That system brought state-assisted elementary education to Ireland for the first time on any significant scale, and the buildings constructed under it tended toward a recognisable type: single-storey, rectangular, gable-ended, with a chimney at each end to heat a long, undivided room. This one fits that pattern closely. By 1904, a later school had been built to the north-west of the original, and the old building passed into residential use, which is how it has come down to us. The two end doors, the paired chimneys, and the six-bay rhythm of the frontage all remain, quiet evidence of what the structure was first built to do.