This is one of a handful of surviving cottages from the 1850s and 1860s. Sometimes these cottages were lived in by their owners but often they were leased or rented by agricultural labourers or mill workers. This cottage was probably built by, or for, Thomas Simmons (or Simmonds) who appears to have purchased the land (part of section 401) from Lewis Fidge when he subdivided it in 1857. In 1860 Thomas Simmons married Grace (nee Morrish) and five of their children were born at Aldinga between 1861 and 1868. Thomas and his family probably lived in this cottage through the 1860s and then moved to Victoria in 1870.
Simmons had sold this land to his brother-in-law William Morrish of Aldinga on 1 Aug 1866 but he continued to pay the rates on the land until 1877 when Morrish sold it to John Langdin, mechanic of Aldinga, in October 1877. Langdin owned the land until his death in Feb 1892 when it passed to the Public Trustee. The Public Trustee sold the land to William Oliver, gentleman of Prospect in Sept 1892 and on his death in 1895 it passed to his widow Emma Alice Oliver. Mrs Emma Oliver sold the land to Robert Hunt, farmer of Sellicks Hill in 1899 and then he sold it to Evelyn Mary Martin, spinster of Aldinga. Evelyn Martin sold the land to John Jobson, labourer of Aldinga, in March 1919 who owned it until his death in 1947.
The building is on the City of Onkaparinga’s local heritage list (#5550).
