Goat Inn, Llanfihangel

One of the last remaining examples in Wales of a traditional beer house, a domestic property where you can drink in a number of the rooms - still today the 'overspill room' resembles living quarters. The Goat is a rendered house in the middle of the village only distinguished by a pub sign on the side and has been in the same family for four generations. It was originally attached to a dairy and sheep farm, but the land was sold off in 1978. The front door with the figure '1' (a licensing requirement, not part of the pub’s address) leads to the original main public room. The original main public room at the Goat, Llanfihangel-yng-Ngwynfa, looks very domestic and small enough to appear like a hallway. Now acting as the overspill room if the public bar is busy, it has a 1950s tiled fireplace and a piano that is occasionally played.

Originally there were two other small rooms - the 'Bar bach' (small bar) situated to the rear left and another at the end of the passage still with the figure '3' on the door but both of these are now in domestic use only. This follows the decision taken by the present licensee’s parents just after they took over in 1956 to convert the room on the right, previously used by the local landowner to collect his rent from tenant farmers, into the public bar. "My parents wanted to concentrate the drinkers in one main room rather than being all over the house"! The public bar has a bar counter and bar back shelves installed in c.1956. It already had an old fireplace and is otherwise unchanged with most of the seating consisting of settees, which have to be moved to play darts.

Despite its closeness to the English border, this part of Montgomeryshire has a strong and vibrant Welsh-language culture. On the second Sunday of the New Year the village holds a plygain service – an unscripted two hours of singing traditional carols in Welsh. Many groups associated with this and related activities use the Goat as a meeting-place so you may find a rehearsal/choir practice here, giving the pub a cultural importance commensurate with its visible heritage. The village's delightful name means "church of St Michael in Paradise".Only open from 8pm on Fridays and Saturdays; also Tuesday nights in Winter when darts matches are being played.