The Wenvoe Arms
The Wenvoe Arms is a village pub in Wenvoe (near Cardiff in South Wales, UK).
Dating back to the late eighteenth century, the pub has been a focal point of the village for many years (although it was bought by S A Brain sometime in the mid 1980s, which was viewed at the time as the final step in the corporatization of Wales' small rural communities) - from its days as a tight-knit farming community, through the population explosion in the 1960s (due to both government and private property development) to the present day.
Although the village's population number of a few hundred at the beginning of the twentieth century has been vastly augmented, the pub maintains a small and close-knit group of regulars, many of whom have been drinking at the Wenvoe Arms for many years. A running joke is that the pub (which has a relatively small capacity, with space for a maximum of 250 people) would not be big enough to house all its past managers. Since Brains acquired the pub (during 2006 - between the time the last permanent licensee Matthew Beck departed and current licensee Paul Cottle took over there were over twelve different relief managers in place. Manager appointments at the pub have ranged from three weeks to one manager who lasted a mere two hours before being replaced.