Second oldest building, and oldest farmhouse in Randwick. The two storey Georgian house or cottage was built from local sandstone in 1848 by George Cooper, a market gardener, alderman and council auditor. The land was originally part of a grant by the crown to Captain Marsh in 1824, but Cooper bought 15 acres of land for orchards and gardens in 1847 and built the first single storey cottage as a farmhouse, converted the next year into the kitchen or servants quarters. The rear facade faces Gilderthorpe Avenue (formerly Orange Street), the orientation showing the building was once part of a larger estate. In the 1860s, Figtree Avenue to the west of the cottage first appears on the map. In 1864, he sold most of the surrounding property and moved to Harkwood, Queensland, making Simeon Pearce his trustee, and died in Brisbane on the 15th of August, 1888. The cottage has mostly remained the residence of Hooper's descendants until the late 1970s, where the house remained largely unaltered up to this date.
