Scaplen's Court is a fifteenth century

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

house in

Poole Poole () is a large coastal town and seaport in Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester and adjoins Bournemouth to the east. Since 1 April 2019, the local authority is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Counc ...

, Dorset, England, adjacent to the

Poole Museum Poole Museum (formerly known as the Waterfront Museum) is a local history museum situated on the Lower High Street in the Old Town area of Poole, Dorset, and is part of the Borough of Poole Museum Service. Entrance to Poole Museum is free, and th ...

. The house is now used as a museum focusing on life in Poole between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, and includes a Victorian schoolroom and kitchen.

History

Scaplen's Court was originally built in the late fifteenth century as a house for a rich merchant, and the style of the house was indicative of the prosperity of Poole at the time. The house was originally L-shaped, and was built of Purbeck and

Bath stone Bath Stone is an oolitic limestone comprising granular fragments of calcium carbonate. Originally obtained from the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines under Combe Down, Somerset, England. Its honey colouring gives the World Heritage City of ...

, and

cobbles Cobblestone is a natural building material based on cobble-sized stones, and is used for pavement roads, streets, and buildings. Setts, also called Belgian blocks, are often casually referred to as "cobbles", although a sett is distinct fro ...

from Poole Quay. The history of the house is uncertain, but a doorway in the courtyard displays the Poole shield of arms. It is believed that a maid named Agnes Beard was murdered at the house in 1598, and there are suggestions that her ghost haunts the house. It has also been suggested by local historians that the building may have been Poole's ''Old Town House'', the first guildhall in the town, and that in the seventeenth century it was known as the ''George's Inn'', and was occupied by the Roundheads during the English Civil War. During the eighteenth century, the house was acquired by John Scaplen, after whom the building is now named. In 1927, the Society of Poole Men bought the house for £16,000 and spent £430 on renovating the property. During the renovation, a

shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence o ...

from the time of Mary I was found at the house. The building was opened to the public for the first time in 1929. In 1931, the house obtained a map believed to be the oldest map of Poole, which dated from 1643. The museum became a Grade I listed building in 1954, and was restored in 1986. In 2006/7, the museum was used to dry an Iron Age boat that had been recovered from Poole Harbour in 1964; the boat is now on display at the nearby

References

{{coord, 50.71280, -1.98884, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title, format=dms Grade I listed houses Grade I listed museum buildings Grade I listed buildings in Dorset 15th-century architecture in the United Kingdom Museums in Poole