Squatters' cottages on the Stiperstones

From the BBC Shropshire pages:

In the late 1800s small settlements began to spread up the hills and across the common land on the Stiperstones above Snailbeach ...

Mr Cooter said they were called Squatters' cottages: "The idea was that if you could build a house on the common land overnight and have smoke coming out of the chimney then you could live in it ...

Many of the houses have disintegrated since they were abandoned when the lead mines closed.

All this will be familiar to readers of Malcolm Saville's Not Scartlet But Gold, but as you will see from the BBC pages, there is now a scheme to restore a couple of these cottages.