Iviii. 



SECOND SUMMER MEETING. 

 POOLE AND BROWNSEA ISLAND MEETING. 



THE SECOND SUMMER MEETING was held at Poole and 

 Brownsea Island on Tuesday, August 8th. There was an 

 unusually large attendance of Members, no less than 164 cards 

 having been sent out. 



POOLE. 



The Club found in Mr. J. Robey Eldridge, Hon. Secretary of 

 the Poole Natural History Society, and Mr. W. K. Gill highly 

 competent guides. The latter conducted the large party down 

 West Quay Road, towards the West Shore. On the way a short 

 halt was called in front of the Almshouse, built in 1816 by 

 George Garland, a wealthy Newfoundland merchant, the same 

 who, on the occasion of the great feast in 1814, presented "One 

 honest plum pudding of one hundredweight " towards the great 

 feast held in Poole Street. For a long time, Mr. GILL informed 

 the party, the merchants of Poole enjoyed the best of the trade 

 with Newfoundland, exporting cloth and varied goods and 

 importing fish, sealskins, oil, &c. All the trade was done on 

 the truck system, and the merchants of Poole grew rich by 

 buying wholesale the goods which they exported and selling 

 them in Newfoundland retail, and buying wholesale the goods 

 which they imported in exchange and retailing them here. 



Further down the party passed the front of the house built in 

 1746 by Sir Peter Thompson, a Poole merchant, who did a 

 large trade with Hamburg, and who had been knighted the year 

 before. It was a good example of a Georgian house, and still 

 bears the Arms of Sir Peter over it. Poole is rich in old 

 merchants' houses ; most of them have been vulgarised, but Sir 

 Peter's house is now Lady Wimborne's "Cornelia Hospital," 

 and thus devoted to a noble purpose. The most ancient 

 almshouses of Poole were next pointed out. They were 

 originally built in the reign of Henry V., and were long the 



