Engineers: Atkinson Peck Construction.
Installers: Bricktie, Manchester.

The three storey house is built of coral limestone & rubble masonry walls, which are over two feet thick. Many examples of such single houses and shops are shown in a 1695 engraving of Bridgetown, Barbados by S. Copen. Bridgetown lies to the south of Speightstown.

Arlington House, like the other single houses, is tall and narrow, and has a bell-cast roof. The narrow gable-end facade fronts onto the street and has a front door that once gave access to the ships chandlers on the ground floor.

The second floor was devoted to the principal family rooms of the house. The bedrooms were on the third, or top floor.

A fine surviving wooden staircase on the south side of the building has turned balusters and various molding profiles that suggest that they date to the Wren period, i.e. mid to late 17th century. This would be consistent with the other evidence for a 17th century date including doorway designs and some architrave moldings.

A fine decorative cornice of plaster and wood in what was probably the sitting room on the second floor almost certainly dates to around 1750 when an exactly similar design was used on a main sitting room and formal dining room in St. Nicholas Abbey, Barbados.

The house had a second floor verandah or gallery around three sides. A stone staircase gave access to the verandah and to the main front door of the house. Thus the store and the family residences had separate entrances.

Next to the staircase, there was at the time of the survey by conservator Martin Weaver, a beautiful frangipani tree, which was famed as the largest and oldest of its kind in Barbados. Unfortunately, during construction work the tree was removed.

The structural woodwork of the house is of several periods and the species include the tropical hardwoods lignum vitae, greenheart and purpleheart and a resinous hard pine closely related to the pitchpine.

From the evidence of repaired and replaced roof timbers, the house has survived some major hurricanes, but many of the roof timbers finally fell victim to subterranean and arboreal termites.