🏰 History & heritage

Captain Cook Schoolroom Museum

The village schoolroom where James Cook learned to read and reckon, now a small museum.

Captain Cook Schoolroom Museum
Photo: John LordΒ , CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The charity school in Great Ayton was built in 1704 and partly rebuilt in 1785, and Cook was a pupil here from about 1736 to 1740, and the schoolroom now tells the story of his childhood in the village and his later voyages, with a reconstructed 18th-century classroom. Free, volunteer-run and a good starting point for the walk to the Cook monument.

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