Capt Cook's Cottage Melbourne

James Cook Snr brought his large family from Scotland in 1736 where he had secured more reliable employ­ment on estate farms. As a bo­n­us, he could send young James to school at his employer’s  expense.

                                

Capt Cook's Cottage

transplanted brick by brick to Melbourne in 1934

Navigator-explorer Capt James Cook (1728-79) never lived in the cottage when his parents James and Grace built it in 1755 in Great Ayton village, Nor­th Yorkshire. [1755 was inscribed in the cottage’s stone-work]. The lad had started his sea-faring apprent­iceship in that year, even though he’d have stay­ed with his parents on trips home, enjoy­ing fishing in the River Leven. So this conn­ec­t­­ion to the Cook fam­ily home was enough to link the cottage and young James.

Leap forward to June 1933, when Great Ayton villagers crammed into the Buck Hotel for the auction for Cooks’ Cottage. The house’s legacy of being connected, however distantly, to one of Britain’s most fam­ous explorers meant that many people arrived to witness its fate. Or­iginally Cooks’ Cottage had been placed under strict conditions that any buyer could not remove the building from England, although this was later waived at the auc­tion. Later the Yorkshire cottage was sold to Melbourne scientist and philanthropist Sir Russell Grim­wade for £800.

Even in the 1930s, not everyone was happy about Cooks’ Cottage being removed from its Great Ayton site. Some locals complained that the house belonged to British history. Others were excited for the move, seeing it as a strengthened tie between the two British nations.

Then there was the job of dismantling the cottage. Each beam, raft­er, flagstone and brick was individually numbered as it was pain­st­akingly removed and placed into 253 wooden crates. Attent­ion to det­ail was important: only the modern parts of the house were left be­hind eg a fireplace ingle­nook that had been built after the Cooks left. The crates were taken by a fleet of lor­ries to a train which delivered them to the port of Hull. There the Commonwealth and Dom­inion Liner Port Wellington was waiting.

The ship left port in Feb, carrying 16,851 ks from the Cook Cottage to Australia. A site in the Fitz­roy Gardens was selected to rebuild the cot­t­age, where it went up brick-by-brick and opened to the pub­lic to mark Melbourne’s 100th centenary 1934. Construction work was completed in 6 months then the cottage was handed over to the Lord Mayor by Grimwade in Oct 1934 in time for the centenary cer­emony. Combining modern interpret­at­ions of Capt Cook's advent­ures, original furniture, a lovely English cot­t­age garden, vol­unt­eers in C18th costumes and a new museum in the stable. The Cottage was perfect when I visited (1958).

Original 18th century furniture

Actually Capt Cook lived on his ship HM Endeav­our and never act­ual­ly lived anywhere on land. The closest he act­ual­ly came to the future-city was from the deck of the Endeavour, a few ks from Point Hicks in Gippsland (which Cook nam­ed). Thus the cottage became a his­t­orical fluke, in a place with no connection to Mel­b­ourne, yet for decades successfully miscast as a nationalistic colonial icon.

The loss of Cooks’ Cottage to Great Ayton was quickly remedied with a gift from the Australian government. An obelisk now stands on the original site of Capt Cook’s Cottage, made out of Point Hicks gran­ite. NB this was the first land Cook aw on his 1770 Australian trip!

So why was the cottage erected in the Fitzroy Gardens if Cook was ne­ver in Melbourne? Partially because the area was surrounded by large shady Eu­r­opean trees, hist­orian Linda Young noted that jour­n­al­ist Hermon Gill created a Cook–Melbourne connection. It was argued that the first Australian coastline, observed by Cook’s 1770 exped­ition, was here. Since Melbourne was about to mark 100 years of settle­ment in 1934, Gill suggested that Melbourne was the proud guardian of the cottage of the man who had made the cen­tenary poss­ible! It’s now a museum to colonial history.

As the cottage structure had been altered considerably by a succ­es­sion of British owners following the Cook family's occupation, its Aust­ral­ian assemblers had to restore the cottage as accurat­ely as records would permit to its mid C18th appearance.

But before it had even been moved, there were discussions in Melbourne about where to reb­uild Cook’s cottage. Some citizens did­n’t want an unpretent­ious little building without any architect­ural value stuck beside the stately national buildings in Swanston St. But by the time Cooks’ Cot­t­age appeared in Fitzroy Gardens in Oct 1934, the public seemed to have warmed to the build­ing: a large crowd watched the centennial ceremony. Mrs Dixon of Great Ayton presented the original key of the cottage to Grimwade.

Statue of Capt Cook in 

the herb garden behind the cottage

Guides in 18th century clothes

Today, Cooks’ Cottage remains open, looking very much like it did back in Great Ayton in the 1700s. The exterior shows a reddish brown brick cottage, remin­iscent of many in the English countryside, com­p­lete with a customised, traditional English garden. The herb and vege­t­able garden behind the house has been planted as it would have  been at the time. In C18th, families relied on home-grown produce for their food supply. Poultry shared the space with vegetables, mixed fruits and flowers. Most families had a good knowledge of herbs uses for cooking and med­icine, using them to cure illnesses and injuries. Cook prevented scurvy in his crews by including scurvy grass/New Zealand spinach and sauerkraut.

Critique
Recently the Capt Cook story is coming under critic­ism. The cottage was one of a few colonial monuments vand­alised on Aus­tralia Day, as public opinion of the once leg­endary Capt Cook changed; more details of his interact­ions with First Nations peo­ple have em­erged. Some First Nations people described the cott­age as an opp­ressive sp­ace with a lack of inf­ormation about the illegal treatment of Indig­enous Australians by white settlers. Opponents pulled down statues of Capt Cook because the statues presented an image of heroism within the colonial narrative, without recognising the colonial violence that these men promoted and committed.

The English garden that accompanies Capt Cook’s House was designed before the cottage’s reconstruction here, and the sweet peas, holly­hocks, mignon­ett­es and other English flowers were NOT grown in York­shire. Rather they came from nur­series in Melb­our­ne. Only the ivy that climbs on the exterior walls was brought from Great Ayton along with the dismantled house, still living in the warm soil.

Fortunately the cottage has undergone two restorations. The first was in the late 1950s and the second in 1978, when a thorough effort was made to investigate and restore the building, furnish it with contempor­ary C18th materials, and surround it with an C18th garden.

Photo credits: ralwaightravel