Carisbrook House Museum

Every third weekend in the month, Carisbrook serves Devonshire Teas, coffee and cakes in the courtyard. Visitors to the house can take a self-guided tour with a multimedia device that will guide you through the rooms and tell you how life in the house was led in the Victorian era in Sydney’s developing suburbs. Carisbrook volunteers will also be delighted to answer any questions you may have.

Special weekday and other weekend group tours can be booked. Morning/afternoon teas or lunch for such groups can also be booked. Email carisbrookhouse@hotmail.com for group and Seniors rates.

Carisbrook is Sydney’s only middle-class 1880s house museum. It is a wonderful contextual historical space where middle-class suburban life at the end of the nineteenth century comes alive. The house and garden provide an exciting glimpse of how Victorian Aussies lived on the North Shore before plumbing, electricity and all the other services were introduced.

Carisbrook houses a fine collection of period furnishings and appliances used by the average Victorian family in their everyday lives. The soft furnishings are faithful to the 1880s period.

Below the courtyard is a vaulted sandstone cistern which once provided water for the house. This and other architectural features, show visitors how people can live without air-conditioning and an ever-running tap. Young visitors especially are fascinated when they realise that if they lived in this house there would be no computers, no television, no microwaves and, when they see the bedroom commode, no flushing toilets!

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