A restoration marvel that lovingly combines old with new

A Carmarthenshire couple have transformed a former coaching inn into a characterful holiday let. Joanne Ridout finds out how they went about it

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WHEN Steve Kind celebrated his stag do with friends at the Maenllwyd coaching inn in Carmarthenshire little did he know that years later he would actually own it and bring it back to life in a restoration project that reinstated its historic past.

For decades many farmers and local residents wandered along the country lanes enticed by the lure of spending time drinking ale and meeting friends at this popular pub, run for a significant chapter of its life by local man Len Lewis. And so it was for Steve and his friends too.

But if you had walked into Steve's stag do it's fair to say that the pub would not have looked as you might have expected a country boozer to look - no huge bar dominating the space but, rather appropriately for this unusual property, a single shelf between two rooms that Len would bring down to create a tiny bar in the open doorway.

Steve said: "It was a flip-down bar where Len would have stood. The piece of wood he had there he would drop it down into the doorway and onto a batten attached to the side of the door frame to receive it.

"And it was at this bar that he poured beer from the barrels. He didn't have any pump system - he used to bang in a brass tap into the barrel to serve it, draw off a jug of ale, and stand at the bar to pour it.

"He did have a row of optics in there and he would always have blue ribbon biscuits and Mars bars in a catering box on the shelves too."

When renovating the building Steve decided to keep the drop-down shelf as a link to its past, now creating a bar between what is now the utility room and the snug.

When Steve and wife Jo bought the Maenllwyd, located close to the village of Meidrim, as with so many older properties over the years past owners and tenants had put in modern additions and unknowingly used inappropriate materials inside and out that were not helping the building to be as healthy as it could be.