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Poplar, from Washington in West Sussex, is an example
of a wasteland or wayside cottage. This is a distinctive type of building
with a roof that is hipped at one end and gabled at the other. The gable
end contains a smoke bay. Smoke bays represent an intermediate stage of
development between the open hall and full chimneys but the period of their
use (early 16th to mid 17th centuries) coincides with the introduction of
full chimneys and in some houses there is evidence that smoke bays &
chimneys co-existed. The cottage was built as an encroachment on the edge
of Washington Common. It had about one sixth of an acre of land. Poplar
has two ground floor rooms, 1 heated and 1 unheated. The heated room is
usually referred to as a kitchen (occasionally hall) and is where the family
would have cooked, eaten and sat. The unheated room would have been a
service room of some kind, such as a buttery, a milkhouse (dairy) or
brewhouse. Both upstairs rooms would have been used for sleeping & for
storage.
We don’t know who the earliest occupants of Poplar were
but they are likely to have been husbandmen or low status craftsmen such as
shoemakers, weavers, tailors, bricklayers, brickmakers or masons. The
occupants of Poplar would have derived a substantial part of their income
from the exercise of common rights. It has been estimated that pasturing 1
cow on the common could constitute as much as 40% of a labourer’s income &
fuel rights could have been worth between 10 and 20% of earnings.
Suggested
Topics
- Unit 2 What were homes like long ago?
Workshops Featuring this Building
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