Poole House

Poole House is a house built around 1730, with the back rebuilt and altered in the mid-19th century, and the front wall restored in 1965-66. The front features header bond brickwork, while the sides are constructed in English bond, with stucco and stone dressings, brick gable stacks, and a tiled roof. It is designed in an early Georgian style with a double-depth plan, standing two storeys high with an attic and a three-bay range. The double-fronted façade is enhanced by banded pilaster strips, a ground-floor cill band, a modillion cornice, and a parapet featuring a central balustrade section with four fine urns. The doorway is framed by fluted Ionic pilasters, a pulvinated frieze, and a modillion pediment, with panelled reveals and a radiating fanlight above a six-panel door. The first floor has eared and keyed stone architraves with cill blocks, and a round-arched central window with a Gibbsian blocked architrave, featuring 6/6-pane sashes. There are three mid-20th century hipped dormers, and the left-hand return has a single bay of matching windows. The roof was raised and extended to the rear in the mid-19th century, with the stacks indicating the original ridge. The interior has been altered in the 1960s and converted into two units in 1989, with none of the original features recorded by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England surviving. Historically, the house was likely built by the Weston family and is one of the earliest constructed during the 18th-century prosperity from the Newfoundland trade. The emphasis on the middle bay reflects characteristics of provincial Baroque architecture, and the façade shows strong similarities to No.2 St James's Close.