Poplar Cottage (circled) as shown on a map of c.1739, on the southern boundary of Washington Common.
Inset, detail based on the OS 1st edition 25in = 1 mile map, showing Poplar Cottage (red).

Poplar Cottage, from Washington in West Sussex, is a building of a distinctive type, with two rooms on the ground floor, two rooms above and with a smoke bay at the gable end and a hipped terminal at the opposite end. A smoke bay – a small bay which contains smoke from the fire – is an intermediate stage of development between the open hall and full chimneys. The date range for smoke-bay houses and cottages is from the early 16th century to the mid 17th century but the style of timber framing used for Poplar suggests that it was probably built towards the end of that period, possibly between 1630 and 1650. About 50 to 100 years later a brick and stone chimney stack was built inside the smoke bay and probably about the same time an outshot was added to the back.

David and Barbara Martin have identified Poplar Cottage as a wasteland cottage, that is, a landless, or near-landless, cottage built either on a wayside verge or as an encroachment on common land. Poplar was built on the edge of Washington Common, on what seems to have been the boundary of Washington and Chancton manors, a point which will be returned to later. Wasteland cottages were relatively rare in the late 15th and early 16th centuries but became common throughout the Weald and Downland region during the period 1580 to 1650, and may have accounted for about 15% of all rural housing by the second half of the 17th century.

The evidence from standing buildings, which undoubtedly represent only a tiny proportion of the actual number built, together with the documentary evidence, suggest that the late 16th and early 17th centuries saw an unprecedented explosion in cottage building. This was a response to the social and economic pressures of the period, which witnessed a rapid growth in population, putting pressure on land, the existing housing stock and opportunities for employment. An increasing proportion of the rural population became landless or near-landless, partially or wholly dependent upon wages, and subject to seasonal periods of under- or unemployment.