iO THE TOWN CELLARS AT POOLE. 



comparati\-ely modern stone building abutting on the north side 

 took the place of a small prison called the Salisbury, and the 

 stocks were kept here down to the memory of persons living. If 

 the building was a hall of the lords of the manor and cases were 

 ever tried here, the prison would be aptly placed, and hence the 

 stocks being here (which they were within a century and less) 

 would be, as it were, traditional, otherwise one would have 

 looked for them in Fish Street, where was the old gaol. 



The ecclesiastical appearance of the building is hardly ground 

 enough to go upon, as, to quote PMward Freeman, " In all ages 

 of good art men built their religious, their civil, and their military 

 buildings in the same style " {^Norman Conquest, Vol. V., 

 page 599). Of course, positive evidence would upset Syden- 

 ham's theory, but no one has produced any. In fact, the 

 absence of any hint of the existence of monastic property in 

 the annals of Poole is the greatest objection to the theory 

 advanced in a paper printed in the Proceedings of this Club for 

 1888. In the various papers given in Sydenham we have all 

 sorts of references, lists of property belonging to the Guild of St. 

 George, and so on, but no hint of monastic property. The 

 Taxaiio Ecclesiasiica of Pope Nicholas (1291), a list of church 

 property, on all of which the King was entitled to levy one- 

 tenth for six years for an expedition to the Holy Land — a list 

 drawn up by the orders of Edward I. and likely to be very 

 complete — does not mention Poole at all, because, says Syden- 

 ham, it was doubtless "included in the entries for Canford." 

 Had there been so considerable a monastery as the above- 

 mentioned paper suggests, it is likely that there would have 

 been a special entry. Another famous list of church, or rather 

 in this case monastic property, is the Valor Ecclesiasikus of 

 Henry VIII., in which is the entry, " Bradenstoke Priory Canford 

 and Poole in the County of Dorset. The rent of assize to the 

 same £zz 13s. 4d. Without deductions." Poole was a 

 dependency of Canford, and both had been granted by the 

 Lord of the Manor to his priory of Bradenstoke. It will be 

 noted, however, that the Woolhouse is distinctly specified as 



