Despite Squeers's contention, when selling the school to parents and guardians, that Dotheboys Hall is grand school in a "delightful" village where the gentry send their sons, Nicholas gets his first hint that it is dismal when Squeers tells him, as they near it, that it is not a "hall" (a gentleman's estate) at all. Nicholas sees that it is a group of ramshackle buildings and hears of students sleeping three to a bed.

But the true shock comes the morning after his arrival, as he confronts the schoolroom. Rather than being the delightful gentleman's school Squeers has described, it looks as follows:

a bare and dirty room, with a couple of windows, whereof a tenth part might be of glass, the remainder being stopped up with old copy-books and paper. There were a couple of long old rickety desks, cut and notched, and inked, and damaged, in every possible way; two or three forms; a detached desk for Squeers; and another for his assistant. The ceiling was supported, like that of a barn, by cross-beams and rafters; and the walls were so stained and discoloured, that it was impossible to tell whether they had ever been touched with paint or whitewash.

The room is old, worn out, and like a barn. The place is falling apart. The students are half-starved, beaten, and have the look of misery that comes with being abused. They are fed brimstone and treacle to reduce their appetites and, beyond that, little more than gruel with a "minute wedge" of bread. They are abandoned to every kind of cruelty and deprivation, far from anyone who can help them.