Proceeding along South Street, as the narrow thoroughfare that connects the stations with the centre of the town is called, the first building to claim attention is the Grammar School, founded in the sixteenth century by a Thomas Hardy, and rebuilt in the same style in 1879. Adjoining the school is "Napper's Mite", a small seventeenth-century almshouse with a picturesque open gallery and a clock bracket, copied from the one that adorns the old George Inn at Glastonbury. The almshouse clock came from the old workhouse near by when it was pulled down. Farther along the street, but on the opposite side, is the Antelope Hotel, a Jacobean building whose beauties are concealed behind nineteenth-century walls, although some interior panelling and carving remain _in situ_. Just beyond the hotel the street joins the main thoroughfare of the town, and at this intersection, where four roadways diverge towards the cardinal points of the compass, historical memories and literary associations clamour for recognition. The curious stone obelisk in the centre of the near roadway, and for many years used as the Town Pump, marks the site of the old Octagon, and was erected in 1784, which date is carved in characteristic Georgian figures on the coping stone. It also marks the site of two houses that stood close together with their upper rooms built over the street. Facing us are the Town Hall and St. Peter's Church, the latter of which is conjectured by some authorities to stand on the site of a Roman temple. It is a stately Perpendicular building with an imposing tower and a remarkable set of gargoyles. The Transition-Norman door-arch of the south porch is a survival of an older church that once occupied the same spot. Outside the church is Roscoe Mullins's lifeless-looking bronze statue of William Barnes, the Dorset poet, who, until his death in 1886, was the near neighbour and literary friend of Thomas Hardy. The pedestal of Barnes's monument bears the following verse from his poem, _Culver Dell and the Squire_:-- "Zoo now I hope this kindly feäce Is gone to vind a better pleäce; But still wi' vo'k a-left behind, He'll always be a-kept in mind." Within the sacred edifice are several interesting monuments, including two cross-legged effigies of the "camail" period, but neither of these is _in situ_. In the porch of this church John White, one of the four founders of Salem and the virtual founder of Massachusetts, lies buried.