WHERE COOK LIVED

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 October 1939, Page 5

WHERE COOK LIVED

LONGSHORE LONDON HOME Captain Cook’s longshore home, said Mr. S. R. Littlewood in a 8.8. C. address recently, was in a very familiar London street, hut one which was then almost in the country. It is the Mile End road. Here stands the house which was Cook’s home all through his later life— though Mrs. Cook can only have, seen her devoted husband at intervals amounting to four years out of the sixteen. The house overlooks some patches ot grass which are all that is left of what used to be the pleasant village of Mile End Green. It is to-day in the midst of London's Jewish quarter. The lower part of if. is a. butcher s shop, announcing itself in big letters as purveying "the cheapest, koshermeat in London.'’ This is in English. ■ Other announcements are in Yiddish. At the back and above is the old house—a plain, two-storeyed house in [a row. with a plaque tolling us that Captain Cook lived there. Cook was not far here from the Thames and its quay-sides. He had only to walk down the appropriatelynamed Jamaica street to find himscli in Shadwell—where he and his wife first set nn house—with Wapping. where she was born, beyond. Close to Wapping Old Stairs he would still find a hostelry, now 400 years old. the vc-rv sight of which must have deliMaed him every time he sailed nnct | it's tittle balcony,’ which still overlooks tit,-, tideway. There was a special hm-mr.n for his interest. The old tav--5 ,-, rn was then called, and still is, “The i prospect of Whitby." This did not i mean a view of Whitby. The tavern 1 was named after a ship called the I Prospect., which came from Whitby, i :>s the painted sign duly reveals. 'j Here, even now. any lover of old sall- ’| ing ships can spend an unforgettable J hour over a plate of cheese and pickles. watching the red-sailed i| barges tacking up the river, just as the Endeavour itself must have done.