The oldest remaining building was erected in 1876, to a design by Queensland Colonial Architect, Francis Drummond Greville Stanley.

The house known as Dumbarton, which was relocated from another Hemmant location to the school site in 2001, was built probably in the 1870s or early 1880s and local opinion attributes its construction and occupation to the Uhlmann and Gibson families.

Non-indigenous settlement in the area commenced the following year when the Franklin and Popham families migrated in the same ship and took up adjacent pieces of land at Hemmant.

In 1866 William Gibson obtained cane cuttings from Louis Hope at Ormiston, which he planted at Hemmant, on a farm he called Clydesdale.

In the second half of the 1870s, however, drought and disease destroyed the crops repeatedly and sugar farming was moved further north.

[1] Complaints by the teacher and parents about the condition of the school, which had been built entirely of pine and was now a dangerous, white ant-eaten shell, resulted in a detailed inspection by David Ewart in 1876.

In 1884, a large open playshed was built to another standard Public Works design (Burmester, Pullar & Kennedy 1996 classification: B/T5).

In 1897 the shingles on the school building were replaced with iron and in 1899 two new rooms and other improvements were made to the teacher's residence.

In 1931 Mr AC Weedon was contracted to improve the residence, construct a teachers' room and install new earth closets for £152/0/0.

[1] In 2001 a nearby house now known as Dumbarton was moved from 41 Hemmant-Tingalpa Rd, corner of Brand Street, onto the school site.

In 1873 this land was further subdivided and one acre (including the Dumbarton site) was transferred to the Doughboy Sugar Company.

In 1911 the house and land were bought by Henry Skiller who lived there until his death in 1955 when it was transferred to Alan Skinner, subdivided and sold to William and Elizabeth Ashcroft.

In 2012, the site reopened as the Hemmant Flexible Learning Centre, a new school targeted at students disengaged from mainstream education.

This area includes the 1876 school, the 1915 open-air annexe and its extension, the 1931 teachers' room, the 1884 playshed, and Dumbarton House.

The roof is corrugated iron, slightly hipped and broader on the eastern side to cover the enclosed verandah section.

Access to the building is via a parallel staircase, railed and posted, on the eastern wall, which leads to a landing which goes to an ante-room on the enclosed verandah.

Internally the walls are primarily tongue and groove, vertically jointed boards, with fibrous cement ceilings, flat in the classroom and sloped in the verandah.

The classrooms are divided by a wall with a sloping blackboard and white board on either side of French doors.

It is a highset timber building, approximately 21.5 by 11 metres (71 by 36 ft), with concrete stumps, partially enclosed under.

An arch leads into a small room, which, with its neighbour, has been divided from the original open-air annexe classroom.

This is a large (7200 by 7700) room with tongue and groove timber walls and a pressed metal ceiling, flat in the middle and sloped towards the sides and ends.

The sub-floor is partially enclosed and the remainder is concreted or bitumened and fitted with fixed timber seats between the stumps.

The verandah surrounds the basically square core of the house and in the southeastern portions it is enclosed with chamferboards and fibrous cement sheeting.

All the fittings are modern, including the sloping clear sealed pine tongue and groove ceiling on the verandah portion and the three double hung windows in the new section.

Early double hung windows and French doors open onto the verandah, presumably from the original room.

[1] Hemmant State School and Dumbarton was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 4 September 2003 having satisfied the following criteria.

Established shortly after the subdivision of the Doughboy Creek area into farms, the school illustrates the expansion of agriculture (initially small cropping and dairying) on the outskirts of Brisbane during the late 1850s and 1860s, during the period when Brisbane was consolidating its position as the principal town and capital of Queensland.

[1] Dumbarton, although considerably modified, provides evidence of c. 1880 single-skin and cross-bracing construction and is one of few remaining buildings in the Hemmant area which illustrates domestic architectural style and form of its era.

[1] The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history.

It is also associated with the locally prominent Gibson and Uhlmann families, who were among the first settlers in the Doughboy Creek (Hemmant) area.