 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.