REGULARS out to prevent an iconic village pub, standing opposite former prime minister David Lloyd George’s boyhood home, from closing say that share applications towards its purchase are coming in “thick and fast”.

But they are urging potential investors yet to do so to get their applications in this week.

Community benefit group, Menter y Plu, has registered with the Financial Conduct Authority to issue shares in the project, with the intention of using funds raised as capital to purchase the 200-year-old Feathers Inn – usually known as Tafarn y Plu – in Llanystumdwy near Criccieth.

They hope to ensure its survival as an inn, a long popular venue with tourists and locals alike, but to also develop it into more of a community hub offering other services. They are encouraging locals to suggest services they’d like to see being offered.

Now it is reminding those who’ve expressed an interest but are yet to commit that the closing date for buying shares is fast approaching, with the share issue closing this Friday (30 Nov). Share applications can be made online through the group’s website at www.menteryplu.cymru, where further information about the project can also be viewed.

“The difference in our case from most other buy-out projects of this kind is that the pub is still very much open and profitable,” says Menter spokesman Siôn Aled Jones.

“However it has been on the market for over three years, as the present proprietors – who’ve been at the helm since 2004 - seek to move on to other challenges. Pubs are closing at an unprecedented number across Wales, and we’d hate to see that happening in Llanystumdwy. It would leave the village with no retail facility, and would be hugely detrimental to the area’s social life.”

The pub is the only one remaining of five that once served the village, and was purpose-built as an inn alongside what in the early 19th century was a newly-built road linking the Llyn penisula with the wider world outside. It still retains the original stable block that was once an integral part of the services it offered.

Local boy David Lloyd George, raised in his uncle’s cobbler’s workshop opposite the pub and educated in the village school, was prime minister during World War One. He is buried in a riverside grave in Llanystumdwy, while the village is also the site of his memorial museum. His last home just up the road at Ty Newydd now houses the National Writers’ Centre.