The Poole Harbour area has been inhabited for well over 2,000 years. The local tribe were the Celtic Durotriges who lived in Dorset in the Iron Age, particularly around Wareham, five miles to the west. The earliest significant archaeological find in the harbour itself is the Poole Longboat, a 10 metre boat made from a single oak tree and dating to 295 BCE. At the time the harbour was probably shallower and any settlement would now be under water. During the last few centuries before the Roman invasion the Celtic people were moving from the hilltop settlements, such as Maiden Castle and Badbury Rings on the chalk downs to the north, and onto the lower vales and heathland around the River Frome. It may be this marshy area which gave the Durotriges, "water dwellers", their name. The Durotriges probabaly engaged in cross-chanel trading at Poole with the Veneti, a seafaring tribe from Brittany.

In the Roman invasion of Britain in the 1st century, Poole was one of a number of harbouring sites along the south coast where the Romans landed. The Romans founded Hamworthy, an area just west of the modern town centre, and continued to use the harbour during the occupation.

Poole was a small fishing village at the time of the Norman Conquest, but grew rapidly into an important port exporting wool and in 1433 was made Port of the Staple. By then the town had trade links from the Baltic to Spain. However, in 1405 the Spanish burnt Poole to the ground because Harry Paye kept attacking Spanish vessels. Around this time, the town was made a county corporate. In the 17th century transatlantic trade and travel developed and at the start of the 18th century Poole was beating rival Bristol as the busiest port in England. The town grew rapidly during the industrial revolution as urbanisation took place, and the merchants put up tenement buildings (mostly demolished in the 1960s).

At the turn of the 19th century 9 out of 10 workers in Poole were engaged in harbour activities but as the century progressed ships became too large for the shallow harbour and the port began losing business to the deepwater ports at Liverpool, Southampton and Plymouth.

In the 19th century the beaches and landscape of south west Hampshire and the Isle of Purbeck district of Dorset began to attract large numbers of tourists and the village of Bournemouth, five miles east of Poole, grew as a holiday town. Growth accelerated and Poole and Bournemouth have become a single conurbation, though Poole remains the more industrial part of the conurbation.

The town centre has many of the old buildings put up by the wealthy merchants, such as the 1761 market house and Sir Peter Thompson's 1746 town house designed by John Bastard. The 18th and 20th century buildings hide earlier buildings, such as the medieval granary and Scaplen's House and the Tudor almshouses. However, the town suffered both from bombing in World War II and the utilitarian town planning of the economically drained post-war Britain, and has lost many old buildings. In recent years, however, some regeneration has taken place, with the demolition of Hamworthy power station and some decaying old warehouses and 1960s tower blocks.

This page was last updated: 12 September 2005

Town history extracts are taken from Wikipedia and are licensed under GFDL