Squatter’s cottages were built on unregulated wasteland, by individuals who paid an annual fine at the Manorial court. Such communities housed a substantial part of the working population of the Coalbrookdale Coalfeld during the Industrial Revolution.

Squatters Cottage was built in 1794/5, at the same time as the adjacent short lived branch of the Shropshire Canal was constructed.  It was originally a single room (later identified as the living room/bedroom), but extensions added a kitchen and bathroom/washroom.

In April 1797, Robert Bayley paid a 6d fine to the Earl of Craven for a cottage on a small triangle of wasteland between the Shropshire Union Canal and Woodlands Lane, just above Stocking Bridge. The site was known as Beggarly Bank. Many of the later occupants of the cottage were colliers, miners or labourers.

It was owned by the tile maker William Taylor in the 1850s who may have installed some of the tiled features.

In the 1920’s the cottage was known as 8 The Stocking.  Vacant since 1963, the cottage was acquired by the former Dawley Development Corporation in 1965, as part of Stocking Farm.

Until the early 1970s, a squatter community survived along Holywell Lane nearby, although the houses have since been demolished or modernised. A single squatter cottage from Burroughs Bank has been re-erected at the Blists Hill Museum.

The cottage was surveyed by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in 1985 and listed (Grade 2) in 1992.  The condition is noted as “very bad” and the risk (of losing the cottage) as “extreme”. 

The Woodlands Lane cottage is unusual in the Telford area because it has not been modernised. Few changes have taken place to the building since the 1850s.