Cottages

We rented a cottage in London for Christmas a few years ago. I don’t know of any available for “tours.”

I was wondering about that. What do you mean by "tours"?

Do you mean a house tour where you are charged admission to tour a place? If there are any, I would imagine they would focus on the grander and larger homes and mansions in London, rather than small homes and cottages. If you mean a tour that will let you see inside a place you are interested in renting, most rental websites, including VRBO and Airbnb, show photos of interiors.

Not many what you'd call "cottages" in London, apart from venues where you'd indulge in the pastime of "cottaging" which is entirely unrelated to the OP's question (I think).

Several places spring to mind.
Dennis Severs' House in Spitalfields
Sutton House in Hackney
Museum of the Home, also in Hackney

ETA: Here's a handy, well curated list of historic homes
https://www.culturalwednesday.co.uk/houses-to-visit-in-london/

I am willing to take a day trip.

The cottage is a form of housing more associated with rural areas rather than a city. The highly unimaginative suggestion of a place to see traditional cottages would be The Cotswolds. There's lots of information on visiting that area on this forum already if you care to search.

Maybe others on the forum could suggest villages that are an easier day trip out from London where one might be able to see or visit traditional cottages?

It’s very easy to see the outside of cottages but less easy to see inside because (a) they’re small and (b) they’re people’s homes. Most of the pretty ones you see in villages will have been modernised inside with kitchens and bathrooms and the like.

So I’m not sure what kind of experience you’re looking for.

There was a Cotswold tour I’ve read about here where you get to have tea in a cottage - not sure if that’s still running? Or you could go somewhere like Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Stratford upon Avon, which remains olde worlde and cottagey.

scratching my head to think of anybody who opens a cottage to the public to go through and look.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding just what and where you are actually hoping to do?

Maybe we mean something different by cottage than you do?

There are a number of museums around the country which have various buildings preserved in historical accuracy and some of these will be cottages. St Fagans in Wales, the Black Country Museum and Ironbridge in the Midlands and Beamish in the North East spring to mind. None of these are really practical on a day trip from London though. Others may know of similar in the south east though.

If you mean some tour that visits cottages in villages I would be very surprised if there are any and I can’t understand why anyone would want to do that, as mainly you will just see modernised living spaces in small old buildings.

Here's the Secret Cottage Tour of the Cotswolds, in which your guide, Becky, takes you to her own home for tea and scones and a tour of her cottage.
https://secretcottagecotswoldtours.co.uk/

It's just a tour inside one cottage, but it may suffice.

This includes a day of touring around to see other villages and Cotswold cottages, but only the outsides of those.

There are a number of museums around the country which have various buildings preserved in historical accuracy and some of these will be cottages.

Oh! Good thinking. Perhaps the Weald & Downland Museum would suit? It’s where they film The Repair Shop. It would be doable as a day trip from London. It’s close to Chichester, which is an easy train ride from London, and presumably you can get a bus or taxi from there.

https://www.wealddown.co.uk/

I think if you want to see cottages, you will need to get out of London for more than a day trip.

The place that springs to mind is Beamish, in Durham (so nowhere near a day trip from London) which has whole landscapes set in period times, including a number of cottages open to explore. I would suggest at least a couple of nights in Durham. https://www.beamish.org.uk/

Another thought is to rent a cottage and stay there. There are numerous options on various platforms, but the Landmark Trust has some nice ones - https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/

Finally, you haven't said when you're travelling, but if you happen to be in London in September, there are lots of buildings open during the Open House Festival. A long but I thought it worth mentioning- https://open-city.org.uk/open-house-festival-2023

To get to the Weald and Downland Museum from Chichester take bus #60 every half hour, it is a 25 minute ride to Singleton (Groom's Yard) then a 5 minute walk- https://bustimes.org/services/60-chichester-midhurst?date=2023-11-27

Chichester is a 1 3/4 hour train ride from London Victoria.

The Black Country Living Museum is 1 mile from Tipton Station- Tipton is 1 hour 50 minutes from London Euston, change at Birmingham New Street, service every 30 minutes. So it is accessible as the Weald and Downland. There is a half hourly bus #229 from Tipton, or walk/
The bus #11/11a mentioned on their website runs every 10 minutes, but from Walsall- which also has a station- change at Birmingham

since the OP hasn't given any more info than the very short question and to say a day trip is ok, we don't know what they are really looking for. Lots of good answers so far, but do they meet what is being searched for? It would be nice to know, especially as this is the first post from pubdef1960

Simon said:

Finally, you haven't said when you're travelling, but if you happen to be in London in September, there are lots of buildings open during the Open House Festival. A long but I thought it worth mentioning- https://open-city.org.uk/open-house-festival-2023

I just wanted to thank you for posting that link. I was vaguely aware of the Open House Festival. I knew from reading about past events that the open houses included flats in The Barbican estate and in Erno Goldfinger's Trellick Tower and Balfron Tower. The chance to see inside those, if period features were intact, would be right up my street.

I wasn't aware of the organisation behind them. The tours that Open City run seem very interesting too.

https://open-city.org.uk/events

Maybe more geared towards a local crowd than the usual tours that visitors from the US might take. A tour of Thamesmead (the location of many scenes in Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange') sounds very interesting, albeit I don't think there's much left.

Not cottage-y in the slightest but hopefully staying on the 'small house' topic.

ETA: A link to the Wikipedia page about Erno Goldfinger, just in case anyone doesn't know who I'm talking about and is curious.