This was a beer house that existed before 1697 and stood in Nile Row, probably next to the town's northern gateway. Its original name was the Three Gins. In 1775 it became the Three Crowns Inn and it was later changed to the Star and Garter and was a Panton Brewery house from 1860 to 1891. It stood beside the footpath that marked the boundary between Poole's town gate and Holes Bay and was used by generations of fishermen who kept their fishing punts on the shoreline. This practice annoyed the owners of Norton's timber yard who tried blocking the path on many occasions! The blocking of the path continued up to the time that Norton's timber year closed in the late 1990' s and only after this did the site's new owners, Asda, successfully close the path by allowing a new one to be created along the waterfront.
In a report dated 1869, to the licensing magistrates, the licence of this house was in doubt, as it was reported that when the last licensee left a week previously, he had left it as a "Common Brothel". The magistrates accepted the word of a new landlord that he had expelled the persons causing the problems at the house, and he would run it as it should be. The building was demolished in 1957 and the only thing that remains today is a settle, that is housed in the Scaplen' s Court Museum.
Extract from ‘A Pint of Good Pale Ale, Poole's Inns, Taverns & Breweries’, by Andrew Hawkes