Volume Six - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - Select Aspects - A closer look at the Cogan Pill . . .

Then Harry explained that there was a Spring tide and that the cellar was flooded. “It always floods, so the barrels are floating about down there!” pointing to the trap door behind the bar. We made him open it up and he was right. You could see the water and a few empty barrels bobbing about. I was amazed at this revelation since we seemed to be a long way from the dock, river and sea. Only recently I found out that Captain Harry Jackson Winterbottom M.B.E. had passed away in November 1977; I had no idea he was a Captain or had been awarded the M.B.E. as he was such a modest and unassuming gentleman and never mentioned the subject.

I'd like to return to the map records for a moment since there are some anomalies regarding the route and extent of the Cogan Pill. I have to add that I prefer to believe that the 1830 OS map is a more accurate basis for the Pill, but I must make you aware of another map by the Geological Survey of 1844 which differs significantly from that of the Ordnance Survey.

The derivation of Cogan according to the book Glamorganshire Place Names - with names of mountains, fields, historic places & co. by Thos. Morgan a baptist minister from Skewen and published in 1901 [130] is; "A corruption of Gwgan, the name of a Welsh personage, according·to some. We rather think the place takes its name from Cogan, one of the leading Norman settlers, who held lands at Huntspill. Sir Milo de Cogan was one of the conquerors and settlers in the South of Ireland, and the same family probably gave their name to this place."

Charles Cooper came to the area from a family of shipwrights and was assigned a lease in the basin dated 1859 which was prior to his boat-building yard situated at the head of the Cogan Pill from 1862. Passing from brother to brother the yard closed in 1905.