Cooks' Cottage, Historical cottage in Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne, Australia.
Cooks' Cottage is a two-story brick house in Fitzroy Gardens furnished with period items and household goods from working-class England in the 1700s. Each room is arranged to show how people managed their homes and lived their daily lives in that era.
The house was built in 1755 by James and Grace Cook in Great Ayton, Yorkshire before Captain Cook left England for his expeditions. A century later, the entire structure was transported to Melbourne and reconstructed in 1934, becoming a museum.
The cottage reveals how ordinary people lived in the 1700s and tells the story of Captain Cook's life before his famous voyages. The rooms show what mattered to working families and how they spent their days in England.
The cottage sits right in Fitzroy Gardens and is easy to reach on foot with clear paths and signs leading to the entrance throughout the park. Plan to spend time exploring the rooms at a comfortable pace, and join a guided tour if you want to learn more details about the space.
When the cottage was dismantled in 1933, cuttings of the ivy on its walls were packed with the bricks and shipped from Hull aboard the Port Dunedin. The sources record that it is unclear whether the original plant survived fumigation by Victoria's Chief Quarantine Inspector of Plants, so the ivy seen on the walls today cannot be traced with certainty to Great Ayton.
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