Description of Historic Place

The Lochiel School consists of a one storey, wood frame school house in the Campbell Valley Regional Park in Southwest Langley. It has a simple rectangular floorplan with a cloakroom and entry at the front end, double front doors flanked by 3/3 windows and a bank of large windows on the left facade.

Heritage Value

Built in 1924 to replace the first neighbourhood school house, Lochiel School is important because of its historic and educational significance and because it is one of two surviving examples of its type in Langley.

Originally established in 1889, Lochiel School was one of the earliest schools formed in the new province of British Columbia. This later version of the school has a history of use and disuse (1925, 1986) and in being moved about to other sites (1950, 1975, mid-1980s).

The school still retains a strong association with a number of pioneer families, some of whose ancestors were instrumental in its restoration. The Biggar Family and the Cameron Family are pioneer families most connected to this building. The Biggars donated the land that the first school stood on, when it was called Biggar Prairie School. It was the Camerons who, after a bitter dispute with the Biggars, named this second school Lochiel after the chief of the Cameron clan in Scotland.

The school house makes a powerful statement about what school was like in 1920s Langley and clearly shows the rural setting that existed at the time. Moved to its present site in the 1980s, the school regains a sense of its historic context by its proximity to an historic farmstead from the same era. The school is now used to educate present day visitors about life and school in the 1920s.

Source: Langley Centennial Museum, heritage files.

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Lochiel School include its:
- Siting in an open area, which is in turn surrounded by trees and located near a historic farmstead of the same era
- Use of original local building material
- Double wooden doors in centre of front facade
- Left elevation (currently north facing) with six 4/4, double hung wooden sash windows with no spaces between
- Right elevation (currently south facing) with row of four clerestory windows centred in facade
- Simple rectangular plan
- Enclosed front cloakroom with hooks for coats
- Hipped gable roof, with low hip roof over cloakroom
- Tall narrow chimney centred on main facade
- Interior wood slat floor