The Weald & Downland Open Air Museum (WDOAM), which opened to the public in 1970, is one of the leading museums of historic buildings and rural life in the United Kingdom. It has a collection of nearly 50 historic buildings - domestic, agricultural and industrial - dating from the thirteenth to the early twentieth centuries, and an extensive collection of smaller artefacts. The 40-acre site is located within a grade II* listed park, part of the West Dean estate, between the villages of Singleton and West Dean in West Sussex.

One of its exhibit buildings is Poplar Cottage, originally from Washington in West Sussex and thought to have been built between 1630 and 1650. When the building was first surveyed in 1978 it had been empty for some time and was completely derelict. Its owner, the Wiston Estate, agreed to donate it to the museum and it was dismantled in 1982.

The timber frame was re-erected at the museum in 1999 and the cottage opened as an exhibit in 2000. It has been set within a small plot or garden of about one-sixth of an acre, which is the amount of land attached to the cottage in 1839 when the tithe map and apportionment were drawn up...