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History: As a result of Van Plettenberg’s visit and the glowing reports about the excellent forests around Plettenberg Bay, the Lords Seventeen instructed the authorities at the Cape to send a commission to inspect the forests of Outeniqualand and investigate the possibilities of developing Plettenberg Bay as a harbour. Consequently a commission consisting of Francois Dummy, the harbourmaster at the Cape, J. G. van Reenen, the burgher lieutenant, and Egbertus Bergh, the merchant, visited the region in 1786. Their report being favourable in all respects, a woodcutter’s post was established there in the following year and Johann Friedrich Meeding was appointed as its custodian.
Meeding was a Prussian who came to the Cape as a soldier in 1751. He was a man of integrity, knowledge and good education who gave his serious attention to his work. Soon he had eight other Company officials under his charge: a wagonmaker and seven woodcutters. A timber store for the storage and seasoning of the timber was required. The task of building one was entrusted to Jan Jacob Jerling, the only free burgher living east of the Keurbooms River. He built the store in 1788, near the beach and just east of the hill on which Van Plettenberg’s beacon stands, at a cost of 15 000 guilders, and in August, 1788, Francois Dummy was able to take the first consignment, consisting of timber for wagons and gun carriages, to Cape Town in his ship the Meermin.
Meeding carried on his work until his death in 1813, and the timber store eventually fell into ruin.
On visiting it in 1803, Janssens described the store as "a large building, recently collapsed, 200 feet (61 m) in length, most unsuitable for the storing of wood, probably not only suffocating the wood but also allowing water, streaming down from the high rock standing close to it, to rot it and damage the building as well as the wood". He therefore gave instructions that a woodshed, 15 m by 6 m, be built near it by the post commander of Plettenberg Bay so that the contents of the old shed could be properly housed.
Proclaimed 1936
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Construction Date: 1788
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