LLANGWM’s village shop has passed into new ownership with a familiar family name and has received a colourful new coat of paint.

Dave Golding, who has lived in the village for 50 years, has taken stewardship of the shop and post office, near the top of Main Street, which was run by his sister Pat until her retirement earlier this year.

He has an intimate knowledge of the shop’s history as told by his mother, who took on ownership of the shop when the family first moved to Llangwm from Windsor in the 1960s.

“When my parents first moved to Llangwm we lived in Mill Street. There was a post office in the village at that time run by Mrs Jones,” said Dave.

“It was looking like nobody was prepared to take it on and my mum decided to turn our front room into the post office.”

The post office later came to incorporate a small shop, and then the Golding family sold it to a local couple.

The shop then came into the ownership of the Thomas family of Hook, who ran the village butcher shop.

Tudor Thomas, son of Ronnie Thomas the butcher, was the shop's owner and Pat, Dave’s sister, worked for him for many years before it came back into her hands.

So why did Dave want to take on the job?

“It’s just something I fancied doing,” he said. “For me it’s not all about money – though I do want to make a living – it is about providing a good service for the village.

“When people look at where they might want to move they always check if a village has a shop and a pub – I like to think we are providing an essential local service.”

In his previous working life, Dave was a safeguarding and welfare officer for schools in Haverfordwest.

He said that the shop is a community hub for many, and allows the villagers to keep an eye on each other: “I am meeting people on a daily basis I grew up with and I can help people with issues in the community from here.”

For Dave, working in the shop is a much less pressured environment than his previous jobs.

“Whatever I put in here is going to have a direct correlation to what I get out. It doesn’t feel like a job. I come up here all day and I find it very relaxing.”