Taylor’s Cottage (Perth, WA)

 tourist information centre/center, historical building

This perfectly preserved building invites exploration and an understanding of what it must have been like to live in the late 19th Century.

Occupied by the Taylor family in the 1880s, this 1860s workman’s home was relocated from the southern end of Meadow Street (number 3 Meadow St) in 1983 by volunteers who dismantled it and moved it to the Guildford Museum Precinct. It is now part of the Swan Guildford Historical Society’s Museum and is open to the public for tours. It is reported that thirteen children grew up there, although not all at the same time. It is believed, however, that at one time 9 people lived at Taylor’s cottage, with many of them sleeping on the verandahs.

Your visit will include seeing the implements Mrs Taylor and her daughters would have used to do the washing for the big family. A metal trough, a scrubbing board, and lots and lots of pegs!

Taylors Cottage has an authentic ‘thunder box’ in the backyard. The traditional thunder box was widely used, even up to the early 1960s in some suburbs. Ours, of course, is decommissioned and is simply a display model. It comes complete with red back spiders on the toilet seat!