Sir Peter Thompson House

Sir Peter Thompson House is a large house, now an office, built between 1746 and 1749 by John Bastard for Sir Peter Thompson. It was extended in the early and late 18th century. The building is constructed of Flemish bond brickwork with rubbed brick headers, limestone ashlar dressings, and has central bay, left-hand exterior and right-hand ridge stacks, and a hipped slate roof. It is an H-plan building with a right-hand wing and a rear extension.

The main facade is three stories and a basement, with a five-window range on the front and a single-story four-window range to the right. It features a slightly recessed ashlar central bay with a modillion cornice and parapet and a central balustrade. A fine, enriched open pedimented canopy above the entrance has a coffered soffit with paterae, scrolls inscribed CONSCRIBE, a helmet and motto over the doorway, and banded rustication to the flanking windows. A cartouche with the Thompson arms is placed on a corbel above the pediment. The first floor has a central Venetian window, and the second floor has a lunette window above a relief of a lion rampant (the Thompson crest). Outer windows have keyed brick heads and flush exposed frames, with 6/6-pane sashes to the first and second floors and cambered 3/3-pane sashes with ashlar aprons on the second floor. The early 19th-century range to the right features a flat cornice, ramped parapet, three round-arched windows with 8/12-pane sashes, and a single hipped dormer to a mansard roof, with a gable stack. The left-hand return has two exterior stacks and two windows between them. The rear has a central recess to a first-floor Venetian window and second-floor lunette windows, which light the central halls. A late 19th-century four-window wing is located to the southeast, with keyed 2/2-pane plate-glass sashes, a bracketed cornice, and a balustrade with urns. A late 20th-century conservatory spans the centre and northeast of the rear facade.

The interior includes fine panelled rooms with original carved marble fireplaces, and decorated rococo plaster ceilings, notably in the front right-hand ground-floor room and the central first-floor room, which extends from front to back. A central right-hand staircase has alternately twisted and plain column-on-vase balusters, fluted column newels, a ramped and carved handrail, enriched brackets, and a scrolled curtail.

Historically, a formal garden and canal formerly extended in front of the house. The staircase was crafted by the same artisan who created the staircases at Nos 20 Market Street and West End House, St James's Close. Sir Peter Thompson (1698–1770) was a Hamburg merchant and Poole native, who retired to this house in Poole in 1763 after residing in Bermondsey. It is considered the finest Georgian town house in Poole, with the emphasis on the central bay being a Baroque device used by the Bastard brothers at Blandford Forum.