A Short History of The Seven Stars
Aberedw has always been a very tight knit farming community held together in a large part by the Church, St Cewydds and the Seven Stars, the pub at the heart of the village.
Twice in recent decades the pub has almost been taken away from us through closure.
Firstly in 1991, when the old Landlady Bertha Lloyd died and secondly in 2018 when the pub almost became a house.
Fortunately, those days are now behind us and following a successful campaign and fund-raising drive members of the community purchased and reopened the pub in Easter of 2019 and have been running it ever since.
If you would like to know more of the pubs back story, click here.
The First Closure
The Landlady most commonly remembered when one speaks of memories of The Seven Stars with older villagers and returning customers who haven`t been for a long time, is Bertha Lloyd, who with her husband Tom ran the pub for some 47 years. Though Toms day job was as a lineman on the Mid Wales railway.
Bertha took over the running of the pub in 1944 following the death of her father Richard Morgan, who was the Publican and also the village Blacksmith, something in common with many of his predecessors. The Blacksmith range was situated between No 4 Church cottages and the pub, now forming part of the toilets. There were many stories of Tom disappearing to the old range to restock the cider from the stores, and not reappearing for some time!
Bertha died in 1991, Tom in 1984, they had married in 1945.
Following Berthas death, the pub was closed and boarded up for some three years. During that time The Edw Bard was born, and anonymous poems began to appear overnight on the boarded-up windows pleading for a “kind soul” to come to the rescue and buy the pub. Those poems are reproduced and displayed above the fireplace in the lounge bar along with the Brecon and Radnor article that inspired Len and Gaynor Newman, to view and buy the pub in 1994 So, the Edw Bard had his wish fulfilled. Following a lot of work and with help from some local builders, renovations and a degree of modernisation were carried out and the pub reopened, the pub bar areas remain in much the same sort of configuration today.
Ask a local and they will tell you more.
The Second Closure
Following two more changes of ownership the pub was bought by a local family and run quite successfully under management from about 2004 to 2012, thereafter it went through four tenancies all of which failed or finished for reasons disconnected to the pub itself.
It closed in August 2017 following the departure of the final tenant though a token effort to open for the 2018 Royal Welsh Show was made but doomed to failure as a “Hobby”.
The next we knew was an application for change of use to residential.
That’s when it really started, a Facebook page was set up dedicated to “Save the Seven Stars” which garnered a tremendous amount of support from patrons far and wide and culminated in a large number of letters of objection to the Council resulting in the application being refused.
The pub was then offered for sale and that’s when the original five families got together to start this journey, basically it was put up or shut up and live with a closed pub in a village without a heart.
So, between us we sought advice from where we could, stumped up some money commissioned a structural survey set up a limited company and widened the net for financial support starting with a community meeting and approaching friends and neighbours et al.
We finally reached our goal and successfully purchased the pub and then entered manic period of very extensive and intensive refurbishment, renovation and modernisation to bring everything up to standards for a modern commercial enterprise turning it back into something to be loved and cherished, albeit within a structure from the c1700`s
We finally felt able to reopen the doors and welcome customers back in Easter 2019, probably too soon, but we had to bite the bullet and go for it.
It has been a journey with its ups and downs as with most projects, significant learning curves all round, hurdles to jump …Covid, say no more! With contributions from many, both within and outside the organisation itself to sustain the few.
The journey continues of course, we are merely the current custodians, but we hope that we have put a sustainable business in place and are maintaining our aim of continuous improvement. We still have goals and aspirations to achieve and with the support of our shareholders and our tremendous staff we shall do so.