12 THE TOWN CELLARS AT POOLE. 



He was unaware of the entry in the book of Lacock that " she 

 rested in the Lord and was honourably buried in the choir of the 

 monastery." There is no idea of her having left the monastery 

 and as to founding one in Poole ; as we have the mention of the 

 two she did found viz., Lacock and Hinton, in Somerset 

 would not the third be also mentioned ? This supposed 

 monastery is got rid of by the device of imagining that the 

 Black Death killed off the brethren, and it then fell into decay. 

 The style of the Town Cellars is later than the time of the Black 

 Death, so presumably it was rebuilt, but how did church property 

 pass into lay hands ? The Church had a peculiar interest in 

 such foundations, and was most unlikely to relax its grip, and we 

 have already noted that before the Dissolution the Town Cellars 

 were in lay hands. 



There is still the suggestion that the place might have belonged 

 to an alien priory, that Henry V. might have seized it with other 

 such property in 1414 and granted it to the manor (as his son 

 granted the land and revenues of S. Giles' Hospital of Pont 

 Audemer in Sturminster Marshall to his Royal College of Eton), 

 but this is, of course, pure conjecture with nothing to support it. 

 Some record or some tradition would have survived at least to 

 Leland's time, and one only mentions this possibility to show 

 that it has not been overlooked. 



One or two points in the paper already mentioned must be 

 stated. There is an old inn, called the St. Clement's Inn, very 

 near the Town Cellars and an embattled gateway at the back of 

 the yard, generally supposed to be a portion of the wall built by 

 Richard III. The gateway seems to have been for a water-gate, 

 as the seaweed was found right against the wall in some exca- 

 vations recently made. The writer of the paper suggests that 

 this was really a portion of the wall of the monastery he imagines 

 to have existed here and to have been continuous with, but at 

 right angles to, the Town Cellars. Further, there was an old 

 inn, The Ship, formerly called The Paradise Cellar, abutting on 

 the east end of the Town Cellars, but quite disconnected, and, 

 on pulling this down to make stores some twenty years ago, some 



