Poplar Cottage from Washington, Sussex, was built in the mid-17th century, or possibly a little earlier, on the edge of Washington Common. Cottages like Poplar were the homes of landless labourers and craftsmen, for whom the commons were an important resource, to pasture a cow or gather fuel. The building has two rooms on the ground floor and two chambers above. Only one room is heated and instead of a chimney, the fire burns in a ‘smoke bay’ at the gable end of the cottage.
This was an intermediate stage of the change in houses between having open halls to having chimneys. The cottage was dismantled in 1982 and reconstructed at Singleton in 1999.