VI. A London Merchant's House and its Owners, 1360–1614

Stow in his Survey of London describes St. Dunstan in the East as ‘a great parish of many rich merchants, and other occupiers of diverse trades namely salters and ironmongers’. Then turning to speak of Thames Street he writes: ‘in this street on the Thames side are divers large landing places called wharves and keys, for cranage up of wares and merchandise, as also for shipping of wares from thence to be transported. These wharves and keys commonly bear the names of their owners, and are therefore changeable.’ The frequent changes of name to which Stow thus alludes probably made it as difficult for him as it is for us to trace the history of any particular quay. Apart from a brief account of Wool Wharf, which in the reign of Richard II became the Custom House and has so continued to this day, Stow contented himself with recording a fifteenth-century reference to Passekes Wharf and Horner's Key, and with an incidental allusion to Porter's Key. But he did not attempt to give their history, though what there was to tell of the last of them must have fallen within his own memory

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