Events · 2026

Five evenings, one morning walk, one harvest service.

All events are held in Llanwrthwl Village Hall or at St Gwrthwl’s Church unless otherwise stated. Public events are free. Times are given on the 24-hour clock. Tea is provided. Children are welcome.

The doorway of Llanwrthwl Village Hall on a November evening with warm yellow light spilling out.

A short year

The shape of our diary.

We are a small charity. Our diary is correspondingly short. There are four working trustees’ meetings in the year and three gatherings open to the parish, plus a small riverside walk in May that has become a quiet tradition. We hold no fundraisers, no galas, no auctions, no concerts. The reason is simple: at our scale, an event that costs more than £20 to put on is an event we cannot justify. Everything below is run on tea, biscuits and goodwill.

Closed · Thu 15 January 2026 · 18.30–20.00

January Distribution Evening.

Llanwrthwl Village Hall · closed trustees’ meeting. The oldest evening in our year. The trustees meet privately to agree the January envelopes — the largest single act of giving the charity makes in any year. Nominations close by post or by hand on Monday 12 January.

The meeting is not open to the public; it must be private, because the names on the table are private. The chair, however, will be at the hall from 18.00 onwards and is happy to take any last-minute nomination or written note at the door.

If you would like to put a household forward

Write a short letter to the chair, c/o Llanwrthwl Village Hall, by 12 January.
Or drop a note into the wooden box on the porch of St Gwrthwl’s Church at any time before that date.
Or ring any trustee for a private conversation — we will not name you to the household.

A buckram ledger and a stack of cream envelopes laid out for the January Distribution in Llanwrthwl Village Hall.

Public · Sat 21 March 2026 · 18.00–21.00

Bring-and-Share Spring Supper.

Llanwrthwl Village Hall · open to all neighbours of the parish. An informal supper at long folding tables. Free. We provide bread, butter, tea and squash; everyone who can brings a plate to share. There is always more than enough — and we send the leftovers, where it is appropriate, home with a household that we know will be glad of them.

After supper, at about 19.30, a trustee gives a short talk — usually fifteen minutes, never longer. In 2026 Gareth Thomas will speak briefly on the 1903 Charity Commission scheme that turned several small parish bequests into the single charity we are today. There will be time afterwards for questions and for unhurried conversation.

What to bring

A plate of food to share — savoury or sweet, anything you like to make. If you cannot bring a dish, please come anyway. We have always had spare seats and spare plates.
A spare jumper if it is a cold March; the hall warms slowly.
Nothing else.

Accessibility and booking

Level access from the porch; an accessible toilet; a small quiet corner with books if children would like one. The hall holds about 50 people comfortably; we have never been over capacity at the supper, but a quick word to [email protected] is welcome so we know how many tables to lay.

Long folding tables in Llanwrthwl Village Hall laid for the bring-and-share spring supper, with mismatched dishes of casseroles and cakes.

Public · Sat 30 May 2026 · 10.30–12.30

A short walk along the Wye, with the chair.

Meet at the bridge · open to all · suitable for steady walkers. An unhurried two-hour walk along the east bank of the Wye, from the seven-arched bridge in the south of the parish to the meadow below Glan-Rhos and back. The route is roughly three and a half miles in total, on grass, gravel and a short stretch of lane. There are two gentle climbs and one rough patch near the riverbank that may not suit walkers who are unsteady on uneven ground.

Robert will pause at half a dozen points along the way to say a word or two on the parish landscape — the place where Edward ab Evan’s farm of Cae’r Llan sat above the lane in 1648, the spot where the trustees of 1872 met because the vestry roof had given in, the meadow that was set aside by the parish in the 1930s for those without a garden. We talk softly. We do not collect.

What to bring

Stout shoes or wellingtons — the meadow can be wet even in late May.
A flask of tea and a small biscuit, if you would like one halfway.
A waterproof. The upper Wye has its own weather.

Accessibility

The route is not, candidly, wheelchair-accessible end-to-end. The first half-mile from the bridge is suitable for a sturdy off-road wheelchair and an accompanying walker; from the meadow gate onwards the path narrows. If you would like to join us for the first stretch and return to the village by the lane, you are very welcome — the chair will walk back with you.

A small group of walkers from behind on a grassy riverside path along the upper Wye, a border collie running ahead.

Public · Sun 4 October 2026 · 11.00 service

Harvest collection at St Gwrthwl’s.

St Gwrthwl’s Church · open service · joint with the Parochial Church Council. By kind invitation of the Reverend Helen Pritchard, the harvest collection at the morning service is shared between St Gwrthwl’s and our Christmas Parcel programme. We do not run the service — that is the work of the church — but a trustee says a short word of thanks after the offertory, and the gifts are sorted in the back vestry the following Tuesday for use in the parcels.

You do not need to be a regular member of the congregation to attend. You do not need to be a member of any congregation at all. Bring what you have. Loaves of bread, tinned food with a long date, jars of jam or chutney, dried sheaves of barley — all are welcomed. Money, if you would prefer, is also welcome and goes into the same Christmas-Parcel ledger.

What we are most glad to receive

Tinned soup, tinned vegetables, tinned fish — long dates, ordinary brands.
Christmas-puddings and cakes if you bake; mince pies for the parcels (sealed packaging).
Pickles, chutneys, jams from your own kitchen.
A small bag of coal or kindling, if you have it spare.

A note on what we ask you not to bring

We are a small operation and we do not have refrigeration in the village hall. Please do not bring fresh meat, fresh fish, fresh dairy or anything that needs cooling — it does not survive the week between harvest Sunday and parcel delivery. Fresh bread, cake and biscuits are fine; we deliver within seven days.

The chancel step of St Gwrthwl's Church set for a harvest collection with loaves, tinned food and sheaves of barley.

Public · Wed 19 November 2026 · 19.00–20.30

Annual Open Meeting.

Llanwrthwl Village Hall · everyone in the parish welcome. Our main public event of the year. The chair presents the year’s accounts in plain English. Gareth Thomas reads the headline figures from the buckram ledger; trustees answer any question they are asked; we close at half past eight on the dot. There is tea and biscuits after the meeting for anyone who would like a private word with a trustee.

This is the meeting at which the charity is publicly accountable to the parish — not because the trust deed requires it, but because the trustees have, for several generations, thought it the right thing to do. Anyone resident in the former Parish of Llanwrthwl is welcome to attend. So are friends of the parish from further afield, though seats are kept first for parishioners.

See full details and reserve a seat →

Llanwrthwl Village Hall set for the Annual Open Meeting with a horseshoe of folding chairs and printed agendas.

Working meetings · closed

The four trustees’ meetings.

For completeness — the trustees themselves meet four times a year, all in the back kitchen of Llanwrthwl Village Hall, all closed to the public. These are working meetings and not events in any social sense; they appear on this page so that the rhythm of our year is fully visible.

January · second Thursday · the distribution meeting (see above).
April · second Thursday · the spring meeting, at which the year’s accounts are agreed before being filed with the Charity Commission.
July · second Thursday · the summer meeting, at which we review any discretionary grants made between meetings and revisit the year’s list.
October · second Thursday · the autumn meeting, at which we agree the Christmas Parcel list and the November open meeting agenda.

Minutes are kept in pencil in the buckram book. A short note of any decisions affecting the parish is read out at the next public gathering.

What we never do at our events

A short list of polite ‘no’s.

For a charity that runs only seven gatherings a year, our list of things we will not do at any of them is, perhaps surprisingly, the longest list we keep. It exists so that any parishioner who comes to us knows what they are walking into.

We do not photograph attendees. No camera. No phones. No image is taken of any guest in our hall, ever.
We do not name beneficiaries. Not in the chair’s remarks. Not in the question-and-answer. Not over the tea afterwards.
We do not pass round a collection plate. Donations are welcome by other routes — see our donate page — but the events themselves are free, and stay free.
We do not invite a sponsor. The events are not branded by anyone, by us included, beyond a single small card on the table.
We do not run a raffle, an auction or a tombola. A small charity in a small parish does not need to lean on luck.
We do not record speeches. If you say a thing at our event, the thing stays in the room.
We do not push a sign-up sheet. No email list at the door. No mailing list to opt into. Our quarterly dispatch arrives, in print, to anyone who has asked for it.

Have you a gathering of your own?

If you would like to invite us.

We are sometimes asked to bring a trustee to a local gathering — a Women’s Institute meeting in Rhayader, a school assembly in Llandrindod Wells, a parish-history group in Builth Wells — to say a few words about the charity’s history and present work. We are usually glad to come. We do not charge a fee. We do not pass round a hat. We bring a small printed handbook and a pot of tea’s worth of stories.

To invite a trustee, please write to the chair at [email protected] with a date, a place, and a sense of the audience. We will reply within a week. Travel beyond the immediate area must, in honesty, be assessed against the charity’s small purse — we sometimes ask for a contribution towards petrol if the journey is over twenty miles.

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