John Davies Bryan

When his health became poor he returned to Wales, settling at Caernarfon, Gwynedd, where he was apprenticed to the drapers Pierce & Williams.

[1] With his health failing again Bryan accepted an offer from his cousin Samuel Evans to take a trip to Egypt in October 1886.

He established a haberdashery shop within the Continental Hotel in Cairo selling hats, drapery, hosiery and shoes.

[4] Bryan opened a branch in Alexandria's Sherif Pasha Street in 1888, which he named Dewi Sant (Welsh: Saint David).

[4] The brothers sold the Caernarfon store in 1889 but opened new branches at Port Said, Egypt, and Khartoum, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

A larger branch in Cairo was thought desirable and the company asked Welsh architect Robert Williams to design a 1,900 square metres (20,000 sq ft) store in the popular Sharia Emad Al Din district.

The store was sold around 1957 to the Syrian Chourbaguis brothers, whose name was painted over the Davies Bryan original signage.

It is now divided into smaller shops including Stephenson's Pharmacy which has preserved some of the original architectural features as a monument to the Welsh presence in Egypt.