West End House And Attached Front Garden Railings And Gate

This is a mid-18th century house, incorporating earlier fragments at the rear. It is constructed of Flemish bond brickwork with stone dressings, and incorporates fragments of early 17th century stone and brick walling to the rear. It has brick gable stacks and a slate roof. The house is of Early Georgian style, with an L-shaped plan and a rear extension to the right. It has two storeys, a basement and an attic, and a five-window front.

The front façade features rusticated quoins, a ground-floor cill band, a cornice and a parapet with balustrade sections, including three pairs of urns on the dies. The fine doorcase has vermiculated blocked Ionic pilasters, a pulvinated frieze and pediment, a rectangular fanlight and a six-panel door. Keyed stone architraves frame the six-panel sash windows on the first floor, with cill blocks. There are three hipped dormers in the roof. The left-hand return has a round-arched stair light.

The interior is reported to include an enriched plaster ceiling in the right-hand ground-floor room. The northeast room contains a marble fireplace with an enriched pulvinated frieze and cornice. A right-hand dogleg staircase features a curtail, turned balusters with moulded caps, and alternating plain and twisted column-on-vase balusters, scrolled rail and curtail. First-floor rooms have cornices and fireplaces.

Attached to the front are good spear-headed railings with orb finials, an overthrow and two-leaf gates.

This house is considered one of the buildings constructed during Poole’s 18th century period of prosperity, and with its enclosed front garden it is one of the finest examples of a local merchant's house. The scrolled end to the handrail is reminiscent of the work of the Bastards of Blandford, and similar to that at Sir Peter Thompson’s House. The gates and railings were separately listed on 28th May 1974.