Unfortunately developers with little or no interest in history, have made it quite difficult to understand what was where before all the new building took place in this historic area of London. The building here was one of the first new developments to be completed, and adopted the name King & Queen Wharf. This despite the fact that part of it is on the site of the former Upper Globe Dry Dock, and the other part is on what was Lower King & Queen Wharf. This last had been known as The King & Queen Dry Dock until being filled in and converted to a wharf by 1894, but was only a small part of what from around 1790 to 1840 was the King & Queen Shipyard with two dry docks and several building slips. There was a dry dock here at least as early as 1663, adjacent to what later became known (by 1754) as the King & Queen Watermen’s Stairs. These were named after a pub which closed in 1942. The sites of both stairs and pub are now lost, probably bombed during World War II. In the 18th Century this downstream dock and yard was called Pitcher’s Point. There were various small vessels built here for the Royal Navy by John Quallett and Joshua Sparrow.
Upstream from here where the bridge crosses the old dock, this is all that remains of the other King & Queen dry dock. The stairs after which it was named were on the other side of this inlet. From 1770 until his death in 1818, the whole complex, including the former Pitchers’ Point was run by Peter Everitt Mestaer, a wealthy ship owner and shipbuilder who had a country house at Wanstead and a town house in New Broad Street. As the King & Queen Shipyard it gained a very good reputation for high quality work building a handful of vessels for the Royal Navy, eight East Indiamen and ships for other trades including the West Indies.