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Only one room of this house was heated, and this
would probably have been called the hall. The second ground floor
room would have been used as a work room and was probably called
the ‘shop’. The two upstairs rooms would have been used as
bedrooms. Instead of a chimney, the hall fire burns in a ‘smoke
bay’ at the gable end of the cottage against the stone section of
the gable. Chimneys were a later refinement.
England's early planning laws ...Poplar Cottage was a landless cottage built on the edge of
Washington Common (common land). At the time cottages were being
built all over England on, or on the edges of, common land. To halt
the growing number of landless cottages being built, one of
England's first planning laws was enacted. In 1589 an act entitled
‘An act against erecting and maintaining cottages’ was
passed. This said:
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 [land to be measured] 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 [about £1,500]
of lawful money of England for every such offence.
The occupants of cottages like this one were trade
or craftsmen, part of the social group that people in the 17th century called the ‘meaner’. Members of the 'meaner' were
resourceful, hiring themselves out as day labour, selling surplus
produce from their gardens and carrying out small-scale trade or
craft activities. The ability to use common land as livestock
pasture or to gather fuel and wild foods was vital to
their household economy. Women and children contributed to the
household by dying clothes (see below and videos above), spinning and knitting.
The 'Red Coats' fought in tunics died with madder root ...
Madder root has been used since ancient
times as a red dye for leather, wool, cotton and silk.
For dye production, the roots are harvested in the first year. The
outer brown layer gives the common variety of the dye, the lower
yellow layer the refined variety. The dye is fixed to the cloth
with help of a
mordant, most commonly
alum
or table salt. |
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