The Waterfront Museum, Local History Centre

The Waterfront Museum, Local History Centre

A woolhouse and public house, now a local history centre, constructed in the first half of the 15th century on 14th-century foundations. The building was altered in the late 20th century and refurbished in the early 21st century.

The structure is a single-storey rectangular building with a parallel open plan. It was originally approximately 36 metres long and comprised ten or eleven bays, but was divided into two unequal parts by the southward extension of Thames Street around 1788. A lock-up was built against the north side of the woolhouse in 1820.

The walls are constructed of coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings and English bond brickwork to the west end, beneath a tiled roof.

The south elevation facing Paradise Street is a six-bay range articulated by two-stage buttresses with a large stepped corbel at the east end. A depressed two-centre archway with double 20th-century doors and chamfered flush surrounds at the far left marks the original central entrance to the building. The third bay features paired cinquefoil-arched narrow lights, while the right-hand bay has a two-centre-arched doorway with a chamfered surround and a moulded corbel beneath the eaves for a now-lost arch. The left return is built of brick laid to English bond. A stepped corbel of three courses appears at the right-hand end. The rear elevation onto Sarum Street is partly obscured by the 19th-century lock-up but displays two two-stage buttresses and paired cinquefoil-headed lights.

The interior is partly divided into two floors. Six bays survive of the late medieval braced collar beam roof with two rows of purlins and arched wind braces below the lower purlin.

Poole developed as a port in the 13th century. A Royal Charter of 1433 established Poole as a staple port, authorising it to collect customs duties on behalf of the King and enabling the export of wool. From the late 17th century until its decline in the mid-19th century, Poole was considered one of the busiest ports in England, with strong trade links to Europe, the Baltic, and North America. This former warehouse or woolhouse stands in what was the commercial nucleus of the medieval town, immediately behind the former Great Quay. It was built in the 15th century as a storehouse for wool and cloth prior to export. An excavation during the 1970s uncovered evidence of an earlier building on the site with a construction date of approximately 1300.