Old Town House (Scaplens Court Museum)

The Old Town House, now Scaplens Court Museum, is a late 15th- to early 16th-century merchant's house, with a northwest range added in the late 16th century. It was restored in 1986 and is located on the High Street in Poole. The building is constructed of coursed Purbeck rubble with various other stones, some Bath dressings, later brickwork, and a tiled roof with stone slate verges. It has an L-shaped plan, with a courtyard formed in later stages.

The southeast front has two 4-centre-arched doorways, the inner one with a moulded surround, and flanking windows with chamfered and moulded surrounds and an iron grille. Modern windows and a full-height canted bay with a lead-hung apron displaying the date 1986 are also present. A passage leads from the entrance to the courtyard. The southwest range features corbelled eaves, a mullioned window, and a gable with stepped kneelers and a 20th-century tripartite first-floor window. The northwest elevation presents a four-window range with sash windows in exposed frames.

The courtyard has a shield of arms of Poole (WP 1554, 1729) on the southwest side, a 20th-century gallery with external stack on the southeast side, a 4-centre-arched doorway and blocked window on the northwest side, and a four-light mullion window on the northeast side.

The interior of the original house retains 15th-century four-centre-arched fireplace surrounds in the southeast range, a substantial fireplace with a cambered stone lintel in the southwest ground-floor room, and four-centre-arched doorways to ridge and batten doors. The southeast range includes a through passage with a hall and store. The southwest range has a ground-floor parlour with a compartmented ceiling of moulded beams, a surviving fragment of a stud partition with laths and lime plaster, and a winder stair to an 18th-century cellar. The roof contains principal and secondary trusses with arched braces to the collars, and four purlin registers with windbraces. The northwest kitchen range has a late 15th-century fireplace and an early 17th-century enriched plaster overmantel. The northeast range has a blind mullion and transom window and a collar truss roof with chamfered beams.

Historical records suggest this building may have served as the former Guildhall and housed the George Inn in the 17th century, and was the home of John Scaplen in the early 18th century. The building represents an outstanding example of a late medieval quayside merchant's house.