![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/circular.png?resize=860%2C420\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhilst thus employed he was a diligent saver as he had ambitions to start his own business, which he eventually did at the age of 26. He posted the above circular just three weeks before the Earl of Plymouth ceremoniously cut the first sod for the new dock on 14th November 1884.<\/p>\n
One cannot help but think that the young J C Meggitt had perhaps bitten off a bit more than he could chew. The nearest railway station at that time was at Penarth Dock, some six miles away. The local roads were undeveloped being narrow unsurfaced lanes totally unsuitable for heavy traffic. Some of the gradients were steep and the cost of transporting materials was inevitably high.<\/p>\n
At that time only horse drawn wagons were available and in the early days of the venture as many as 30 horses were being used. As an alternative to delivering by road, small coastal vessels into Barry Old Harbour were used but the costs of loading at\u00a0Cardiff, delays at sea, unloading at low tide and storage of materials near the original Ship Inn proved to be as costly as delivery by road. There was much double and triple handling of materials involved.<\/p>\n
The tenacious Meggitt overcame the difficulties and proved to T A Walker, the main contractor for the dock construction, that he \u201ccould deliver the goods\u201d at competitive prices and the new business continued to thrive. As it became evident that the Barry Harbour option was becoming increasingly unworkable, Meggitt moved his operations to Cadoxton.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just the dock construction that required vast quantities of timber for \u201cfalse works\u201d. Hundreds of houses and shops were being built which further increased the demand for timber. Until the new Barry Railway was functional some three years later the struggle with transporting timber persisted.<\/p>\n
It is of interest to note that the imports of timber in those early days were from Archangel (Russia), Norway, and Canada. The supplies were negotiated though local agents.<\/p>\n
In 1888 he went into partnership with his brother-in-law Mr D Sibbering Jones and the firm now known as Meggitt and Jones opened other depots and facilities in East Moors Cardiff, Gloucester and Aberystwyth from which places they supplied high quality timber to their respective hinterlands. At each of these principal locations, the firm operated large saw mills and the business continued to flourish.<\/p>\n
…to be continued.<\/p>\n
Tony Hodge<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MR J C MEGGITT – Part 1 In his article in the April 2024 Edition of What\u2019s On, Steven Jones wrote about certain people who were notable in the early days of Barry\u2019s development. One of these was named Meggitt. Here is the story of that man. J C Meggitt was born in Wolverhampton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[334,420,228],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6cWjO-15231","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15382,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=15382","url_meta":{"origin":15231,"position":0},"title":"The Life And Times Of Mr J C Meggitt – Part 2","author":"Alan Williams","date":"9th April 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MR J C MEGGITT - Part 2 In Part I, we learned how the 28 year old John Claxton Meggitt came from Wolverhampton and established a thriving timber supply business in Barry. Initially this was to supply the timber needed for \u201cfalse works\u201d in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Interest Articles"","block_context":{"text":"General Interest Articles","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=334"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Picture7.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15618,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=15618","url_meta":{"origin":15231,"position":1},"title":"J C Meggitt Story – Post Script","author":"Alan Williams","date":"30th May 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Articles of Interest THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MR J C MEGGITT - POSTSCRIPT In the three previous issues of What\u2019s On, we learned how 28 year old Meggitt had come to Barry in 1884 at the start of the construction of the dock and set up a thriving timber\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Interest Articles"","block_context":{"text":"General Interest Articles","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=334"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Leggit-01.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Leggit-01.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Leggit-01.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Leggit-01.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Leggit-01.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Leggit-01.jpg?resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":15483,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=15483","url_meta":{"origin":15231,"position":2},"title":"The Life And Times Of Mr J C Meggitt – Part 3","author":"Alan Williams","date":"5th May 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Articles of Interest THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MR J C MEGGITT - Part 3 In Parts 1 and 2 we read about John Claxton Meggitt\u2019s timber trading business and his retirement at the age of 70 after which he undertook numerous world travels during which he visited over 35\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Items for May 2025"","block_context":{"text":"New Items for May 2025","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=421"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14835,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=14835","url_meta":{"origin":15231,"position":3},"title":"A Brief History Of Barry To 1939","author":"Alan Williams","date":"22nd November 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A BRIEF HISTORY OF BARRY TO 1939 We all go to Barry, at least now and again, but how often do we pause to consider how the town of almost 60,000 people today became developed in a relatively short space of time? This chronology has been (mostly) taken from the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Interest Articles"","block_context":{"text":"General Interest Articles","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=334"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Picture9.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8503,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=8503","url_meta":{"origin":15231,"position":4},"title":"Trevor Williams Xmas Workshop","author":"Alan Williams","date":"30th October 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Trevor Williams Xmas Workshop Hello Wenvoe Readers It all started as a hobby in December 2019 in my garage, making a few Christmas decorations to keep me busy when the weather was too bad for me to play golf. Then along came Lockdown - so, it was back to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Interest Articles"","block_context":{"text":"General Interest Articles","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=334"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/IMG_5370-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9173,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=9173","url_meta":{"origin":15231,"position":5},"title":"Avian Art","author":"Alan Williams","date":"2nd March 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"An ink drawing of a Buzzard, by Mr Gordon Jones. which perched in his garden on Port Road. Wenvoe is full of people honing their skills at this uncertain time in our lives. \u00a0 \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "General Interest Articles"","block_context":{"text":"General Interest Articles","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=334"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Picture3frame.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15231"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15231"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15236,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15231\/revisions\/15236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wenvoe.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Picture5.png?resize=300%2C225\")
<\/a>In his article in the April 2024 Edition of What\u2019s On, Steven Jones wrote about certain people who were notable in the early days of Barry\u2019s development. One of these was named Meggitt. Here is the story of that man. J C Meggitt was born in Wolverhampton in 1858 and after leaving school he joined the firm of Shelton and Sons, Wolverhampton in the timber supply trade. His duties included travelling widely throughout Britain seeking business opportunities for expanding the timber trade.<\/p>\n