Prominently situated on a windswept hillside facing north along the rugged coastline of the South Pacific Ocean, Glory Cottage was built in the 1860s and holds historical and technological significance as an early European building constructed in the remote landscape of Pitt Island. Historically, it is connected with early settler Frederick Hunt, whose descendants still live on Pitt Island.

Lying east of New Zealand’s South Island, the Chatham Islands include two inhabited islands – Rēkohu/Wharekauri (Chatham Island) and Rangihute/Rangiāuria (Pitt Island) – together with several uninhabited islands. From the 1400s the Chatham Islands were home to Moriori, descendants of East Polynesian settlers with a distinct language and culture. The islands were rich in birdlife, eels and seafood, and the kernels of the kopi (karaka tree), all of which supported the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the nine Moriori imi (tribes). Their society was shaped by Nunuku’s law, a pacifist doctrine that forbade killing and warfare. European contact began in 1791 with the arrival of the brig Chatham, from which William Broughton claimed the islands for Britain. European sealers began arriving from 1800. In 1835 the trading ship Rodney brought migrating Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama to the Chatham Islands, seeking sanctuary from the upheavals following European settlement in Taranaki and Te Whanganui-a-Tara. The Waitangi Tribunal commenced investigation of historic Moriori and Māori grievances in the early 2000s, with the Moriori claim settled in 2020.

Rangihute/Rangiāuria (Pitt Island) is the smaller of the inhabited Chatham Islands. Glory Bay, in the southeast of the island, was named following the wreck of the ship Glory. Glory Cottage was constructed in the late 1860s by William Gordon Jacobs, a colourful character who had reputedly come to New Zealand as a ship’s carpenter and arrived in the Chathams on the Despatch in 1866. The simple rectangular form is built of sawn Kauri boards with split foundation blocks, likely of akeake. Its principal living area comprises paired entrance doors at the front and rear elevations and a central fireplace, with two compact bunk rooms arranged at the northern end. Externally, the walls are clad in lapped weatherboarding; internally, the walls are fully lined with horizontally fixed, beaded tongue and groove boarding. An attic space, reached by a steep ladder, further illustrates the building’s utilitarian design. The cottage’s technological significance lies in its high degree of preservation as an essentially unaltered example of 1860s New Zealand timber architecture.

Alternative theories exist concerning the original purpose of the cottage. One school of thought states that the cottage was built for Frederick Hunt (1817-1891), who wanted it as onshore accommodation for whaling crews; the second, that it was built and used as a shepherd’s cottage for much of its life. The truth is likely a combination of the two stories, given that Hunt farmed much of Pitt Island from the 1870s, trading potatoes and other vegetables with visiting ship crews. In the latter part of the twentieth century, the cottage provided temporary accommodation for farm workers, and occasionally, trampers. The cottage underwent restoration in 2007-2008 and is now a tourist attraction.