The Welsh village fighting to save a historic pub – with a dash of Hollywood help

Winter will be brutal for the pub industry; seven in 10 are warning that rising energy costs could force them to call time for good. Coming hard on the heels of the impact of Covid lockdowns – which saw the number of pubs in the UK fall below 40,000 this year, a loss of more than 7,000 in a decade – this feels almost like an extinction event.

Yet, in one small corner of west Wales, locals are attempting to reverse the trend, instituting the sort of heroic rescue for their own pub – threatened with closure – that Hollywood itself would love.

Glan Yr Afon, or Riverside, a slate-floored 16th-century inn on the road from Machynlleth to Aberdyfi, is the pub in peril. Owners Glyn and Corina Owen-Davies have had it on the market for three years but, with no takers, announced that they will close in October.

For the 350 residents of Pennal, Gwynedd – home in 1406 to the last Welsh-born Prince of Wales, Owain Glyndŵr, as well as the cottage where Led Zeppelin ballad Stairway to Heaven is said to have been written – the prospect of losing one of their few community assets caused widespread concern. And a grassroots initiative was born.

Meirion Roberts, a local farmer and community council chair, explains: “We hand-delivered letters to all 150 households in the village, saying: ‘Do you want us to move on with this?’ And it was a unanimous yes. That’s how it started.”

Last month an official campaign was launched to crowdfund taking the pub into community ownership. The plan is to redevelop it as a hub for locals, with additional funding coming from loans and government grants. Supporters include Huw Jones, who for 35 years was chef at Buckingham Palace, and – appropriately perhaps – Hollywood actor Matthew Rhys, star of HBO series Perry Mason.

The initial target is £250,000 via £100 shares – on offer until August 31. But the total bill is likely to be more than a million pounds once refurbishments are done. If they can raise the money, the odds of success are good, with many pubs, like the Exelby Green Dragon in Bedale, being rescued by locals – in this case, Rishi Sunak was one of those locals and became its first shareholder. 

According to the Plunkett Foundation, which has supported community businesses for nearly a century, there are currently 146 pubs in community ownership in the UK and only one has ever closed.

Community projects like this are on the up. “The pandemic has actually led to about a 30 per cent increase,” says Chris Cowcher of the Plunkett Foundation.

 “People value and want to sustain the community in which they live.” Not just with pubs, either: schemes include a bakery in inner city Liverpool, a bookshop in Devon and a flour mill in Cornwall.

Back in Wales, Jones, a handsome silver-haired 62-year-old with a military bearing, picks me up from under the clocktower in nearby Machynlleth. It’s a close knit community, he explains on the five-minute drive. 

“Matthew Rhys’s father had the next farm to my family, who have been farming near Pennal for over a century. We saw during lockdown how much the village relied on the pub and we are going to lose out unless we do something about it.”

Jones has always been a doer. One of three brothers, the family farm couldn’t support all of them, so he went to London to do an apprenticeship at the Savoy under the legendary chef Anton Edelmann, before joining the Palace staff. 

“I had 34 glorious years with Her Majesty,” he reminisces as we drive down green lanes and over the Dyfi Bridge to the pub on the banks of the Afon Pennal River. Then in 2016 he suffered heart problems and was forced to take retirement. The upside, he explained, was being able to come back to Wales.

 “I saw the world, travelling on the yacht Britannia, and there is nowhere finer than here. So I have returned to my roots.”

If the pub project goes ahead, he’ll be advising on the food, as well as getting involved with staff training – and it’s hard to imagine he’ll be able to resist getting back to the stoves. At Buckingham Palace he worked his way up to premier sous chef, second in command in the palace kitchens, but declined the job of head chef. 

“That’s office bound,” he explains. “I just wanted to be in the kitchen training young people.”

Awarded the Royal Victoria Medal and a Member of the Victorian Order, both honours conferred on individuals who have given personal service to the sovereign, Jones is bound by confidentiality, so there’ll be no juicy bits of Royal gossip. But the Queen does insist on local, seasonal food, he tells me. “If we gave her strawberries in December from Australia she’d go ballistic.”

Every Easter, around the time of the Queen’s birthday, Jones’ father would send a leg of lamb from the family farm which the chef would roast for her. “She loves the area and community,” he says. So will we be seeing the Queen’s favourite dishes on the menu at Glan Yr Afon? “You may well… They may not necessarily be portrayed as the Queen’s though.”

When we arrive at the pub, a local scaffolder is putting up a stage for the village show, complete with sheep shearing competition, races for dogs and for children, and prizes for finest cow and calf, the best runner beans and the tallest sunflower.

Rhys is hanging out in the bar with some of the committee of Menter y Glan, the group who’ve formed to mastermind the pub scheme, sorting through a hoard of signed rugby memorabilia as well as copies of Rhys’s films and film stills, signed by the actor, ready to be auctioned on eBay for the cause.

The actor turns out to be a slender, quiet man with a wide smile. Born in Cardiff, Rhys spent holidays on the family farm in Pennal. “Halcyon days,” he describes, “Saturday night in the pub was always a warm up for Sunday in church across the road. Slightly stronger singing on Saturday night,” he muses. “I wonder why,” shouts a committee member, as the group collapses into laughter.

“Easter was always a big holiday, lambing season, that we loved as it was such a busy time,” Rhys continues in his soft Welsh-flecked accent, “My uncle would always tease us, say, ‘well you’ve got small hands, so if any lambs need pulling, you’ll be in charge of that’.

“But in a community like this you’d always be aware of how others were helping each other out.”

Rhys’s first language is Welsh, and although he now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and six-year-old son, “every word I speak to my son is in Welsh”. He’s been trying to get a film about his hero Owain Glyndŵr made. “We’ve got a great treatment and script in place. And we have moments of interest – but then they say ‘It’s just Braveheart!’” he says, as the committee members, a mixture of check-shirted farmers and local civil servants, roll their eyes collectively.

Does Rhys plan to move back as Jones did? “I’d like to spend a lot more time here. I want my son to really know this community where I have these roots and ties and my hope is that we’ll come back more for the summers and those big holidays. He’s six now and had his first tour of the farm on the quad bike last night – he was wide-eyed when he came home. ‘That was amazing’,” says Rhys, mimicking his son’s delight with the skill of a RADA-trained actor.

The actor is buying shares in the scheme. As Roberts tells me gleefully: “He’s signed the form and left the amount open.” Not that owning more of the £100 shares will give buyers any more power in the scheme: the deal is that it’s one vote per shareholder, regardless. After three years there’s the possibility of dividends, but as local farmer and committee member Steve Smith tells me, patting his chest: “I don’t think anybody will be buying it for an investment – it’s from here.” Jones agrees: “What people of my generation are doing is investing in our grandchildren. We want them to be part of this in future years.” Jones’s partner Sioned Pugh, whose day job is promoting the Welsh language, chimes: “Although you can set it against tax.”

Pugh runs the marketing for Menter y Glan, while Smith’s wife Helen Minnice-Smith wrote the business plan. It has been, as Rhys points out, “Herculean work”. “Hundreds of hours,” Minnice-Smith admits. Do they regret taking it on? “No! If you want something done, ask a busy person! But it’s a passion thing.” Smith jumps in – lively conversation is clearly part and parcel of this committee – to add: “If you back out half-way through then you’ve completely wasted your time, haven’t you? Might as well carry on until the end.”

The end, as in the goal, is to put the pub at the heart of the village, with a shop selling local produce and essentials as well as a café and child-friendly garden. Hotel-style bedrooms will provide a vital income boost. Demand is likely to be high, with Machynlleth’s acclaimed comedy and chamber music festivals a short drive away, smart seaside resort Aberdyfi just down the road, as well as the two Michelin starred Ynyshir restaurant a mile away. Local game shoots and angling will also provide customers.

Just as importantly to Jones, who struggled with depression after leaving work, the pub will include a mental health hub – a first for a community scheme – supported by a local GP. And of course a pub itself provides a valuable place to let off steam, Jones says. “A farmer would never ever go to a doctor if he had mental health problems. He is more likely to go to a pub and have a chat.” 

If all goes to plan, the pub will be taken over in October, with the shop opening before Christmas. The pub will continue to be run by a professional team and, while the shop will initially be staffed by volunteers, they hope to boost local employment by recruiting staff. Work on the hotel-style bedrooms will be the next phase, completed by 2025 if all goes well. 

In the meantime, with a bit of luck, we commoners will be able to feast on a right royal roast lamb in the Glan Yr Afon. Who knows, it might be enough to awaken Owain Glyndŵr – or at least get that film made.

To take part in the share offer or for more information, go to menteryglan.org/