London Before the Conquest

by W. R. Lethaby

Fig. 25.—Fragment found in South Wall.

Botolph’s Wharf.—According to Stow, the Conqueror confirmed to Westminster Abbey “the gift which Almundus of the port of St. Botolph gave ... with the house and one wharf which is at the head of London Bridge ... as King Edward granted.”

Dowgate.—In a charter of 1150-51 which Henry II. as Duke of the Normans gave to the citizens of Rouen, he grants that the men of Rouen who are free of the Merchants’ Gild shall be quit of all dues save for wine and craspisce. “And the citizens of Rouen shall have at London the port of Douuegate as they have had from the time of King Edward.” After warning other ships off the wharf, they were free to cut them adrift.[94] “Here then we have evidence that even before the Conquest the citizens of Rouen had a haven at the mouth of the Walbrook.”[95] A chapter in the Laws of Æthelred names the traders who were free to come to the Port of London, and amongst these appear men of Flanders, France, and the Emperor’s men. The men of Rouen, then, as in 1150, brought wine and craspisce (dried sturgeon or whale). From the fact that the Walbrook issued here, Dowgate has been derived from the Celtic Dwr, water; this would be a very interesting fact, if there were any certainty in it.

Steelyard and the Vintry Wharf.—In the privileges of the Emperor’s men just mentioned we seem to have, as Dr. Sharpe suggests,[96] the beginnings of the Gilda Teutonicorum, the great mediæval Hanse by Baynard’s Castle called at a late time the Steelyard. In the time of Henry II. the House of the Cologne Merchants in London is mentioned, and Richard I., when passing through Cologne, remitted the rent-charge on their Gildhall.[97] This privilege was confirmed by John in 1213.[98]

We can probably trace the port of “the Flanders men” of Æthelred’s laws in a charter granted by the Conqueror to the Abbey of St. Peter’s, Ghent, in 1081, granting Lewisham, Woolwich, etc.: and within London, the land which King Edward [the Confessor] gave, namely, a portion of Waremanni-Acra with the wharf belonging to it, with its market rights, stalls, shops, and dues, and that all merchants who have landed in the Soke of St. Peter [of Ghent in London] shall return and enjoy his protection. This charter is witnessed amongst others by Deorman, Leofstan, and Alward grossus of London.[99] In a later confirmation of 1103-09 the ground is called Wermanacre, and this name must be preserved in St. Martin’s “de Beremanescherche” (date 1257);[100] for Stow says St. Martin in the Vintry was sometimes called “St. Martin de Beremund Church.” Kemble gives a copy of the original charter of the Confessor, granting to St. Peter of Ghent the above-named places, also within London the land which anglice is called Wermanecher, with the wharf and all rights and customs. Mr. Round shows from other documents that the Confessor visited St. Peter’s, Ghent, in 1016, and then promised to restore to the monks their possessions in England, and that Lewisham, etc., had first been given to the monastery as early as 918. The gift was confirmed by Edgar, with its “churches, land, and crops,” at the prayer of Dunstan, who ruled St. Peter’s for some time when exiled from England.

Fish hythe, in the western part of London, is named in the Saxon charter 718 of Kemble’s collection. Riley, in his introduction to the Liber Custumarum, which contains a valuable mediæval survey of the wharves, puts Fish hythe near the bottom of Bread Street. Ebbegate, which is mentioned in twelfth-century documents, is, Riley says, the same as Swan Wharf.[101]

There must, even in Alfred’s time, have been some sort of customs house, for there were quay dues, and a charter of 857 speaks of the place in London where the weighing and measuring of the port was done.[102]

We thus have a picture of a busy river front, the shore, backed by the city walls and gates, indented with a series of docks crowded with shipping. Says FitzStephen, “To this city from every nation under heaven merchants delight to bring their trade by sea. The Arabian sends gold, ... Gaul her wines.” And Robert of Gloucester, characterising the fame of several towns, says, “London for ships most.” Camden likens the docks to a floating forest.

The principal trade of the port seems to have been in slaves. A law of c. 685 relates to the buying of chattels in London-wic, and the traffic is frequently mentioned. Fifty years after the Conquest it was unsafe to go near the ships in Bristol harbour for fear of being kidnapped, as was young Tristram in the story. Gildas, looking back to the commerce of the Roman period, likened the noble rivers Thames and Severn to two arms by which foreign luxuries were of old brought in. In our period a multitude of craft must have filled these basins and lined the river bank—dromonds from the Mediterranean, “long ships and round ships” from the north, and slavers from Rouen and Dublin, with many a splendid war “dragon” like Olaf Tryggvison’s—“Foreward on it was a dragon’s head, but afterwards a crook fashioned in the end as the tail of a dragon; but either side of the neck and all the stem were overlaid with gold. That ship the King called the Worm, because when the sail was aloft then should that be as the wings of the dragon.” The ships of Cnut’s English fleet were “wondrously big; he himself had that dragon which was so mickle that it told up sixty benches, and on it were heads gold bedight, but the sails were banded of blue and red and green.”[103] There were also pilgrim ships, for we hear that Offa “purchased a piece of land in Flanders in order to build a house where the English pilgrims on landing might find refreshment.”[104] According to the legend St. Ursula and her virgins embarked at London.