Poplar Cottage – a wasteland cottage from Washington, West Sussex

Danae Tankard

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.

Common land

Common land refers to the non-arable and unenclosed parcels of land on a manor such as wastes, woods and pasture. It was owned by the manorial lord but the tenants had the right to its natural products – for food, fuel and materials – and to pasture their animals. However, not everyone had equal rights to the use of common land. Common rights went with tenure, with some tenants entitled to a greater share of common resources than others. The use of common land was governed by manorial custom and regulated through the manorial courts. Manorial courts could qualify customary entitlements further through the issuing of ordinances or by-laws, restricting the use of commons to certain times of the year, the number and type of animals that could be pastured, or the amount of material that could be taken at any one time. Tenants who took more than their entitlement, or who otherwise infringed custom or ordinance, were presented in the manorial courts and fined.

The landless – squatters, inmates and their tenants – had no legal rights to the exploitation of common land, although in practice they might be allowed unofficial ‘use rights’, such as the gathering of fuel, or the pasturing of a cow. The exercise of common rights could form a substantial part of the income of the poor. It has been estimated that in the 18th century the pasturing of a single cow on common land might constitute as much as 40% of an agricultural labourer’s income and fuel rights could have been worth between 10 and 20% of earnings. Income derived in this way could allow a family to remain self-sufficient rather than become dependent upon parish rates. For this reason, although tenants were assiduous in guarding their common rights, they would tolerate unofficial use by those who might otherwise become a financial burden on the parish, for which they would all be liable.

The regulation of cottage building in late 16th and 17th centuries

The problems caused by the illegal erection of ‘cottages’ on common land were explicitly recognised in 1589 when an act entitled ‘An act against erecting and maintaining cottages’ was passed. This stipulated that:

For the avoiding of the great inconveniencies which are found by experience to grow by the erecting and building of great numbers and multitude of cottages, which are daily more and more increased in many parts of this realm, be it enacted … that … no person shall within this realm … make, build and erect, or cause to be made, built or erected, any manner of cottage for habitation or dwelling, nor convert or ordain any building or housing made or hereafter to be made or used as a cottage for habitation or dwelling, unless the same person do assign and lay to the same cottage or building four acres of ground at the least, to be accounted according to the statute or ordinance De terris mensurandis being his or her own freehold and inheritance lying near to the said cottage, to be continually occupied and manured therewith so long as the same cottage shall be inhabited; upon pain that every such offender shall forfeit, to (the Queen) … £10 of lawful money of England for every such offence.

Exemption from the Act could be obtained by petition to the Quarter Sessions on grounds of poverty, provided the permission of the manorial lord was given. Lodgers (described as ‘inmates’) and the subdivision of houses were not allowed. This was qualified by an act passed in 1601 entitled ‘An act for the relief of the poor’ (usually referred to as the Poor Law Act) which gave churchwardens and overseers authority to build cottages on ‘waste and common’ for the use of the poor, with permission of the manorial lord:

It shall and may be lawful for the said churchwardens and overseers … by the leave of the lord or lords of the manor, whereof any waste or common within their parish is or shall be parcel … according to any order to be set down by the justices of the peace of the said county at their general Quarter Sessions … to erect, build and set up in fit and convenient places of habitation, in such waste or common, at the general charges of the parish … convenient houses of dwelling for the said impotent poor.

A comparison of manorial records with the records of Quarter Sessions suggests that the majority of cases of illegal cottage building were dealt with by the manorial courts. Faced with an illegally erected cottage the manorial court might fine the cottager and order him or her to pull it down or grant the cottager licence to continue the cottage. Cottages that were licensed by the lord became either copyhold or leasehold properties; in other words their inhabitants became legitimate tenants of the manor, paying an annual rent and subject to manorial custom. Those indicted before the Quarter Sessions received similar treatment: they could be fined and ordered to pull the cottage down, or they could be given a licence, with the consent of the manorial lord, and allowed to continue it. Licenses could be granted for a set period of time or in perpetuity. Evidence from both types of source material suggests that by the late 17th century the rate of illegal cottage building had declined markedly.

The manorial status of Poplar Cottage

Poplar Cottage lay within the parish of Washington, which in the late 17th century had a population of about 400 to 450. Land in Washington was divided between two manors, Washington and Chancton, and both manors had rights of common on Washington Common, as well as having common land elsewhere within the parish. The manorial status of Poplar Cottage has always been problematic to those attempting to research the history of the house. A map of the manor of Washington dated c.1739 shows the cottage set on its own on the edge of Washington Common and outside the boundary of the manor on land held by Sir Robert Fagg, lord of the neighbouring manor of Wiston. Additional research has now established that in 1715 Fagg bought a chunk of the former demesne lands of Chancton manor from the lord of Chancton, James Butler. This chunk included 85 acres in the north of Findon and 70 acres in Washington. Although the exact bounds are unclear, the 70 acres appears to have comprised the land to the south of Washington Common (and so including Poplar Cottage), extending to the top of Chanctonbury Hill. By the 19th century this land, and Poplar Cottage, had been incorporated into the Wiston estate, owned by successive members of the Goring family.

The court book for the manor of Chancton beginning in 1603 records several presentments in the manorial court in the early 17th century for the illegal erection of cottages on manorial waste. For example, in 1603 the court presented that ‘William Wilkin has encroached on a parcel of the lord’s waste called Washington Common and thereupon has built a certain cottage without licence’. And in 1605 five tenants were presented together for building cottages without licence on manorial waste and each fined 6s 8d, and ordered to pull their cottages down or face a further fine of 10s. The earliest surviving court book for the manor of Washington begins in 1682 by which time there were at least half a dozen wasteland cottages, all copyhold properties. Such cottages can be identified either because they are described as ‘formerly part of the waste’ and/or because of their location on or besides manorial waste.

Cottages and the social status of their inhabitants

Despite extensive research it has not been possible to identify the earliest occupants of Poplar Cottage. However, a broader analysis of 17th century cottagers enables us to draw some conclusions about the occupants’ probable social and economic status. The requirement of the 1589 act that cottages must have at least four acres of land must have represented the minimum amount of land then thought necessary to sustain a family. We know from the Washington tithe map and award of 1839 that at that date Poplar had 26 perches of land, which is about one sixth of an acre. The size of this holding (essentially a garden) has been recreated at the museum on the small plot of land on which Poplar Cottage is now situated.

Indictments before the Quarter Sessions for illegally erecting cottages which record the defendant’s status show that they were typically either husbandmen, labourers or craftsmen, with husbandmen forming the largest single group (reflecting the predominance of this group in rural society). Those granted licences either to erect or to continue cottages were typically, although not exclusively, paupers, reflecting the requirements of the 1589 act. To put these social groups in context, in 1577 when William Harrison wrote his Description of England he divided the population into four ‘sorts’ of people, gentlemen, citizens or burgesses, yeomen and ‘artificers and labourers’. The last group Harrison described as ‘day labourers, poor husbandmen, and some retailers (which have no free land), copyholders, and all artificers, as tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, brickmakers, masons, etc’. In terms of social status, Harrison’s ‘fourth and last sort’ were, however, above the level of the truly poor, whom Harrison divided into a further three ‘sorts’, the impotent poor, those who are poor ‘by casualty’ and the ‘thriftless poor’.

It is probable that the early occupants of Poplar Cottage were husbandmen, earning their living from the land. Since the land adjoining the cottage was clearly insufficient to sustain a family, the occupants are likely to have derived much of their household income from the exercise of unofficial use rights on Washington Common. They may also have supplemented their income by working as agricultural labourers for larger landholders. Alternatively, they may have earned a living from one of the more poorly paid rural crafts – Harrison’s ‘artificers’ – perhaps as a shoemaker, weaver, or bricklayer, all occupations present in 17th century Washington.

Living on the margins?

The location of Poplar Cottage on the boundary of two manors is unlikely to have been accidental. Manorial boundaries and areas of common land were clearly marked out both by natural features and boundary markers such as hedges, stones, crosses, poles and fences and were periodically surveyed and recorded by groups of tenants. The c.1739 map of Washington shows that Washington Common was hedged, with access by gate at various points. However, the original builder and occupant of Poplar may have hoped that its location on the boundary would mean that it would escape scrutiny by either manor. The fact that it survived suggests that at some point the status of the cottage was legitimised, presumably as part of the manor of Chancton, and it became either leasehold or copyhold. The lives of cottagers have been described as ‘economically marginal’, subject to intermittent hardship during periods of under- or unemployment or when they had too many mouths to feed or became old or infirm. Nevertheless, they represented a significant – and visible – proportion of the rural population, and, as such, were an integral part of the communities in which they lived.

Timber framing in the Weald and Downland

Jo Thompson - Carpenter in residence.

I first visited the Museum in the late 1970s as a schoolboy, and remember a timber frame in the process of being erected – Pendean Farmhouse, I think. I started to visit again about 10 years later, now as a fledgling timber-frame carpenter, each time seeing something new in the frames re-erected at the Museum.

I became ‘carpenter in residence’ in 2002, moving my workshop to Singleton, and studied the buildings in greater depth. Now, nearly 30 years after my first visit I can still find fascinating aspects of detailing and arrangement of the different timber frames, even though I have studied them countless times. Such is the depth of the resource of the Museum’s re-erected buildings.

This resource is tapped into many times in the practical historic carpentry courses that I teach, which are based in the Jerwood Gridshell Space. With each new course I am able to find a long list of buildings that will specifically illustrate the great variety and chronology of the development of timber framing in the Weald and Downland region. With historic frames from the late 14th century to the late 19th century, ranging from domestic, to communal to agricultural to small scale industrial, the Museum is like a multi-faceted jewel, with so many different ways to view it.

This year has presented me with a number of new challenges and opportunities, including cutting and pitching a spire and prefabricating and erecting a North American-style frame. Whilst there is neither at the Museum, I have looked at other buildings to illustrate solutions to these carpentry problems. First came the request to construct a timber spire, which would act as a model upon which the craft of oak shingling could be demonstrated and practiced. I started looking at every church spire I could and again was presented with a great variety of shapes and sizes. To see what I mean compare the church spires of Bosham to Plaistow to West Dean to Sompting. Luckily I was ably guided by steeplejack Peter Harknett, and architect John Deal, who assisted me with all aspects of the design as well as on the course itself. Diana Rowsell and I decided this would make a wonderful training opportunity and I am indebted to all the students who put in so much hard work to make the spire such a successful project. This, of course, is another great strength of the Museum, the vast knowledge of the staff, tutors and students.

The recent ‘Square Rule’ timber frame course arose as a result of requests from students wishing to learn more about the North American framing techniques. Square Rule is essentially a 19th century method. It was never really adopted in the UK, but many of the concepts that underpinned it were present in 18th century framing methods and in the 19th century frames that we have re-erected at the Museum. So yet again I could delve into the resource and perceive the buildings in the light of ‘division of labour’, standardisation and interchangeablility.

By happy circumstance the dismantled timbers of the late 18th/early 19th century hay barn from Ockley were laid out in the Gridshell for repair prior to re-erection. This allowed the students to closely investigate and compare the carpentry techniques that they were practising with those from a UK example of the same period.

So whether looking at kingposts, crown posts or decayed and repaired bayposts there are ample examples with which to educate, inform and inspire visitors to the Museum, and to tell the story of timber framing in the Weald and Downland.

Joe Thompson runs Sussex Oak and Iron from his workshop at the Museum’s Downland Gridshell and teaches a number of timber-framing courses, notably the Museum’s flagship Timber-framing from Scratch course.

Dendrochronology and its use at the Museum

What is dendrochronology?

Dendrochronology is the dating of historic wooden objects by dating the trees from which they were created, using the patterns of growth revealed by tree rings. Tree rings vary in width as a result of varying climate – wider rings in more favourable growing conditions – and these variations are shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by trees in local, regional and even national areas.

Starting with living trees and working backwards, dendrochronologists have combined many overlapping sequences to develop ‘master curves’ of growth patterns covering thousands of years, the earlier periods being the result of the analysis of bog oaks and archaeological material. To date a particular sample, the tree ring widths are measured and the sequence is compared to a master curve, moving it along year by year until a good match is found between the two patterns. If the match is close enough, we can be confident that it pinpoints the period during which the tree was growing.

However, that is not quite enough – we need to know the date of the last year the tree was growing. That is generally the year it was felled, which is usually assumed to give the date when the building was constructed, as there is substantial evidence that in the great majority of cases trees were felled for specific projects and used immediately. But the problem is that in many cases the outer rings of the tree are missing, either because they were hewn off originally or because they have decayed. Luckily the last few rings of an oak tree are sapwood, which is visually distinct from the heartwood, so if the sample retains at least some sapwood it is possible to estimate the minimum and maximum number of rings that are missing, and thereby a date range during which the tree must have been felled. Extensive studies have been made of the number of sapwood rings present in trees, and the range is often taken as 10-55 years: so if a sample has only one sapwood ring present, and that was laid down in 1601, the felling date range would be estimated as 1610-1655.

But all this analysis needs samples to enable the dendrochronologist to measure the ring widths, and these have to be cross sections of the tree – you can’t measure ring widths from the outside surface. Occasionally it is possible to use actual slices, if, for instance, part of a timber has been removed for repair, but in most cases we have to obtain cores. These are produced using a coring tool, essentially a tube with one end cut into a sawtooth pattern. The only damage to the timber is that coring leaves a small hole, about half an inch in diameter. The person doing the coring has to be able to ‘read’ the tree from the outside, and aim as accurately as possible from the outside of the tree to its heart, taking care to preserve any sapwood present. It isn’t easy – but luckily, in Roger Champion the Museum has an expert! The cores are then mounted, sanded and polished to reveal the detail of the rings, and sent to the dendrochronologist.

We are lucky in that department also. Ian Tyers is one of the country’s leading dendrochronologists, and has analysed samples for us for many years. When we first met him he worked for MoLAS (Museum of London Archaeology Service), where he analysed timbers from excavations. He then moved to the dendrochronology laboratory at Sheffield University, and has now become an independent consultant.

Cross section of timber used to date the Ockley hay barn by dendrochronology,
and below, the graph of ring widths from which the timber was dated.

Museum exhibit buildings dated using dendrochronology

Upper hall from Crawley, Sussex

As we reported in the spring magazine, 15 samples were analysed and cross matched. The resulting sequence has 124 rings and matches several regional master chronologies extremely well. A few of the samples have sapwood rings, and the felling date is in the period 1494-1513.

Hall from Boarhunt, Hampshire

This result was also reported in the spring magazine. Eight timbers were sampled. Four of them have been analysed, and these have been shown to be matched pairs, in each case two timbers being taken from a single tree: they are the two internal tie beams, and the two corner posts at the east end of the building. The tie beams yielded a sequence with only 66 rings and could not be successfully dated. However, the corner posts have 102 rings, and end at the sapwood boundary, so a full sapwood allowance has to be added. The result is that the felling date would have been in the period 1355- 1390.

Barn from Hambrook, Sussex

Twenty cores were taken and 13 were measured, all of which cross-correlated to produce a sequence of 79 rings. A good match was obtained with master curves, and several of the samples have enough sapwood to show that the trees were felled in 1756 or perhaps a year or two later. The date of the barn has always previously been quoted as 1771, based on an inscription found on the top surface of a rafter in the middle of the front roof slope, underneath a thatch batten that appeared to be the only one ever fixed there! So there is a 15 or 16 year gap between the date of felling of the timbers and the date of the inscription. There can only be two possible explanations: either the inscription was added later, or the trees were kept for that length of time before being used. Either is possible, but the former is more likely.

Hay barn from Ockley, Surrey

This building is not yet re-erected, but is already dated. A sample taken from one of the four main plates gave an extremely strong match with the master curves, and has its complete sapwood, giving a felling date of 1804.

Treadwheel from Catherington, Hampshire

The building (not the wheel) was sampled, and six of the 10 samples cross matched to give a sequence ending at 1668. With allowances for sapwood, the felling date for the timbers is estimated at 1670-93, so our guidebook description will have to be amended from early to late 17th century.

Longport farmhouse from Newington, Kent

Four of the phases of construction and alteration were sampled and analysed, producing dates or date ranges as follows:

Bayleaf farmhouse from Chiddingstone, Kent

Bayleaf was built in two phases. The timbers in the earlier phase, consisting of the hall and service end, were felled between 1405 and 1430. Despite extensive sampling, we have so far failed to obtain a date for the later phase.

Barn from Cowfold, Sussex

Samples were taken from the original wall plates, showing that they were felled in the winter of 1535-6.

Winkhurst Tudor kitchen from Sundridge, Kent

Only one sample produced a date range for felling, 1492- 1528. This accords well with our stylistic interpretation of the building.

Pendean farmhouse from Midhurst, Sussex

During the work that was carried out in 2002, 45 samples were taken, of which 24 were measured and dated, producing a felling date in the winter of 1609.

Market hall from Titchfield, Hampshire

Not all of our samples have yet been analysed, but initial results indicate a felling date around 1619.

House extension from Reigate, Surrey

Most of the timbers are re-used, so cannot be used to date the building. Samples taken from two original floorboards produced a felling date range of 1596-1632. Stylistically the building belongs to the first quarter of the 17th century.

Brick drying shed from Petersfield, Hampshire

Four samples cross matched and gave a felling date of spring 1733.

Buildings that have been sampled but not yet dated