80 THE POOLE TOWN CELLAR. 



and Antiquarian Society, as a task beyond my poor ability. I, 

 however, determined first to see what help tradition would afford 

 me, and, on enquiry amongst the older inhabitants of the locality, 

 found a legend that it had either been a nunnery or, as they 

 represented it, "a King's Palace." You may possibly consider 

 tradition but a poor reed to lean on, yet tradition is frequently more 

 to be trusted than records written by persons knowing nothing of 

 the place and taking no especial interest in the particular object. 

 With these legendary data, I consulted the oldest maps I could 

 find, and in one made by Sir Peter Thompson (A.D. 1741) I find 

 this Town Cellar called the King's Hall. In another map (dated 

 A.D. 1784) in the Harbour Master's Office, it is also so described, 

 and on comparing these two, I found a corroboration of what I had 

 already pointed out, from an inspection of the external character- 

 istics of the building, that Thames-street had been carried through 

 the centre of the building, removing a portion of it, a fact 

 altogether ignored by both Hutchins and Sydenham ; although, 

 singularly enough, Hutchins may show the building entire, with 

 apparently a covered pathway running under and through it, whilst 

 his plate of the Town Cellars shows only the portion lying between 

 Salisbury-street and Paradise-street on the north and south, and 

 bounded on the west by Thames-street, and on the east by the Ship 

 Inn, and both he and Sydenham entirely ignore that portion of the 

 building now used as cellar and storehouse by the New Inn. The 

 Ship Inn, and the finial bases on the extremes of the two separated 

 portions of the Town Cellars, determined in my mind that the 

 legend of the nunnery was correct. I shall refer to the decided 

 ecclesiastical features in this building, the Ship Inn, later on, and 

 will here only mention that it was standing in 1871, but has 

 since been pulled down, and Messrs. Oakley's corn stores now 

 occupy the site. I' will now describe to you the Town Cellars, the 

 St. Clement's Wall, called by Hutchins and Sydenham the 

 remains of the Town Wall, and as I consider erroneously so, and 

 one or two neighbouring remains bearing on this subject of the 

 Town Cellar and the Town Wall. 



