Llanfechain Community Shop
The Village Shop closed 9 years ago and was sold as a private dwelling. Although there was a Save Our Shop group formed at the time there was insufficient support to purchase the premises and start a community enterprise.
In 2006 the Committee of the Memorial Hall started to look at raising funds to refurbish and extend the Village Hall which was outdated and delapidated. Included in that scheme was to be a dedicated space for the Post Office and a Community Shop. At the end of 2009 that dream became a reality with the hall completed and the PO moved into its new premises thanks to support from the Welsh Assembly Government’s PO Diversification Fund and the Welsh Assembly Government’s Rural Retail Fund.
To open the Shop has taken a little longer with problems around setting up the legal structure needed to enable us to operate. On June 7th at 8am Llanfechain Community Shop opened its doors for trading, selling fresh milk, bread, fruit & vegetables, meat & meat products and general groceries and most importantly for the children sweets and ice cream. We are also planning to sell newspapers but because of delays with the legals and consequently delays opening a bank account there will be a 3-4 week delay. We have 25 volunteers giving variable amounts of time, and four committed Directors and a Company Secretary. Our first week of trading has been exciting and well supported and we already feel that our community enterprise is on its way to success.