YOU can live in a town for years but still find out things you did not know about it from a book aimed at visitors.

Discover Poole, the companion volume to author Rodney Cooper’s book Discover Bournemouth that was published last year, provides a fascinating reservoir of facts about about the port and its neighbours, including Wimborne Minster and Purbeck.

Rod Cooper gives directions to all the places from the neighbouring town of Bournemouth.

And he has amassed a treasure chest of intriguing facts.

Here are just a sample taken from Discover Poole (Halsgrove £14.99):

1) At the beginning of the 19th century, 90 per cent of the population of Poole was employed on the harbour.

2) The imposing Byzantine-style church in Parkstone that is now St Stephen the Great Orthodox Church was formerly dedicated to St Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury who died in 1099.

3) Celebrities who have lived in Branksome Park include the England cricketer Wilfred Rhodes.

4) WE Boone, the iconic hardware store in Poole High Street, dates from 1820.

5) It is estimated 200 red squirrels live in Brownsea Island.

6) The Lord Nelson pub was built in 1764 but the 17th century Poole Arms is the oldest on the Quay.

7) The medieval Scaplens Court Museum has a stone fireplace with initials believed to have been scratched by troops in the Civil War when it was known as the George Inn.

8) The logboat in Poole Museum, discovered in Poole Harbour, dates from 295BC.

9) David Squire, who became town crier in 1958, is the longest serving town crier in the world.

10) Early guide books suggested the bodies of Civil War Parliamentarians killed in battle are buried in the grounds of Hamworthy’s St Michael’s Church.

11) The grave of 19th century evolutionist Alfred Russell Wallace is marked by a fossilised tree in Broadstone.

12) Stapehill Abbey, near Wimborne, currently closed, was once home to a Trappist order of nuns who were pledged to a vow of silence, had no heating and lived on a diet of bread and beer twice a day.

13) In 1994 it was discovered that a frieze in the tuck shop at Canford School was an original taken from the throne room of a ninth century Assyrian king. It was sold at auction of £8m.

14) The sea at Studland has the highest density of seahorses in the world and a large number of its relative, the pipefish.

15) Purbeck House Hotel in Swanage dates from 1875 and boasts a temple in the garden with a tiled floor that graced the Houses of Parliament.

16) Durlston County Park is home to 33 species of butterfly, 250 species of birds, 500 wildflowers and 500 moths.

17) Leeson House, the field study centre in Purbeck, was used for research into radar in the war where the first tracking of a submarine took place.

18) In 2007 the largest Bronze Age axe hoard to be found in Europe was discovered behind Putlake Farm, near Swanage.

19) Shatters Hill in Wareham probably derives its name from the shattering of the town gates by Civil War Parliamentarians.

20) In 1214 King John had Peter of Pomfret hanged and quartered on Wareham’s walls.

This was after he had foretold the death of the monarch.

21) TE Lawrence kept a sleeping bag for visitors at his Clouds Hill home that was stolen shortly after the release of the film Lawrence of Arabia in the 1960s but was returned in 2001.

22) The Martyrs Tree in Tolpuddle is the largest sycamore in Dorset.

23) The Peace Garden at Affpuddle was given to the church by Sir Ernest Debenham, whose family founded the famous stores.

24) The coach carrying the Tolpuddle Martyrs is believed to have stopped at Wimborne’s Albion Inn on the way to the convict ship.

25) The monument to Sir Edmund Uvedale at Wimborne Minster appears to have two left feet.

• Discover Poole by Rod Cooper, Halsgrove Press £14.99