cook room n Cp OED ~ 'on board a ship, the galley; a separate building or outhouse' (chiefly naut quots 1553-); cp DJE 'room or building used as a kitchen' (1707-); DC Nfld (1633-). A large building forming part of fishing premises or 'room' in which food is prepared and the 'crew' accommodated.
   [1611] 1895 PROWSE 99 [Guy's laws] No person to destroy, deface, or spoile any stage cooke room flakes &c. Penalty £10. [1663] 1963 YONGE 56 With this [timber] they built stages, flakes, cookroom, and houses. [1693] 1793 REEVES vi Several inhabitants in Newfoundland ... have ... ingrossed and detained in their own hands, and for their own private benefit, several stages, cook rooms, beeches, and other places in the said harbours and creeks. [1718] ibid 88 I have given out several orders for the admirals and the oldest masters and planters to survey the stages and cook-rooms, etc to know what belong to ship-rooms and what was boat-rooms. [1778] 1792 CARTWRIGHT ii, 387 I built a deathfall for wolves, near the cook-room. 1888 M F HOWLEY 208 In the winter men lived in 'cook-rooms' attached to the stages, and boarded themselves or 'ate themselves,' as they said. 1893 Trade Review Christmas No 13 The size of the ancient cookrooms depended entirely on the extent of the planter's fishery business, but in general they were about fifty feet long and thirty wide. Along the sides, a few feet from the floor, were the sleeping berths for the men, and a place underneath for each man's chest. The open space in the middle was devoted to the use of the tables where sometimes fifty men sat down together at meal-time. The bill of fare consisted of pork and duff, Hamburg bread and butter, tea, and oftimes spruce beer, a large cask of which was always on draft. 1895 PROWSE 450 On every large mercantile establishment the cook-room was a necessary institution. All the planters and servants were boarded and lodged on the premises during their stay in the capital; the men slept in bunks ranged round the cook-room like the berths in a ship. 1953 Nfld & Lab Pilot ii, 78 A small inlet [near Harbour Grace], known as Cook Room, indents the shore close southward of Old Sow point. T 147-65 They got into this fight Christmas morning; they had a cook-room down there—that's where the Jerseymen used to stay.

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