A campaign has been launched to buy and reopen a village pub as a community-owned public house and cooperative.

Residents from across the Aeron Valley met last week to discuss the possibility of buying the Vale of Aeron pub as a community co-operative.

The public house is currently for sale for £325,000 and a group of local campaigners are trying to gain enough support across the valley to raise funds and buy the community asset.

People behind the Vale of Aeron campaign say their aim is to buy the Vale of Aeron to run it as a co-op and a community-owned public house.

They are encouraging people to get involved in the venture by investing and buying shares.

Rowland and Daphne Evans have owned the Vale for years, but the pub is now for sale and the current tenancy will end in the autumn.

Concerned about the future of the pub, and that it might close, a small group came together to see if a co-op could be formed to buy the pub, and run it as a community pub. And now the small group has increased, as representatives of organizations have had their say in the first session.

“It’s a place to drink and eat, to laugh and have a healthy debate, to play pool and sing and plan the next play,” says Iwan Thomas, one of the locals who started to wonder whether the community could buy the pub.

“But it’s more than that. Some mentioned that the Vale is something else too - it is a ’place to learn to live’. It is the heart of the community that has a cultural feeling - it would be a challenge to create such a place from scratch.”

During a meeting of local groups last week, inspiration from other social enterprises were shared. It was a boost to hear that a community such as Llandwrog had purchase the Tyn Llan pub recently.

The group also started to gather ideas about what the pub could be, and how everyone could benefit from it in the future. But this session for representatives of the local clubs and societies was only the beginning of the journey.

Before engaging with more locals through a series of drop-in sessions, Menter Tafarn y Dyffryn has published a questionnaire and are encouraging as many local people as possible to fill it in order to gather everyone’s opinions.

More information on the project can be found at tafarn.cymru