Saturday 2nd May 2026 ko 15:00

Shropshire County League Premier Division

LLANYMYNECH 1 (Thomas 46)

WHITCHURCH ALPORT 1946 5 (Jones 24 Milburn 25 Hailes 48 Owen 66 Cadman 87)

Att 21

Free Entry

Back in medieval times the border between modern day English Shropshire and Welsh Montgomeryshire must have been fairly porous. Even hundreds of years later there are still towns with Welsh names in England such as Trefonen and vice versa. But none managed to be quite as odd as Llanmynech the village that manages to be both English and Welsh!

It would be simple enough to say that the A483 runs south to north through Llanymynech with everything to the left in Wales, and everything to the left in England. But its not as easy as that, why would it be? The border runs about 5 yards east of the road, so every front of every building to the right of the Google Street View below is in Wales, but everything behind is in England!

The Bradford Arms demonstrated the point neatly, and provided a good pre-match lunch too. We sat by the nearest window facing the street in the second photo above. The flowers are in England but everything behind them, is in Wales.

Of course this is all fairly meaningless, save for the pub paying a small amount of business rates to Montgomeryshire Council for the front door being in Wales. There isn’t a hard border, but that really wasn’t the case in Covid. There was the of case of Wales banning the pubs from opening but not the English, so only the regulars on the English side could go for a pint, and only through the back door! There was also the local golf course with 15 holes in Wales and three in England, so work out what kind of game you could have under Covid restrictions!

The football club play on the English side around 150 yards from the border, and a club here existed as far as back as 1858 which would make Llanymynech the oldest club in Wales. They did play in the Montgomeryshire Amateur League until 2022/3, but the club were formed on the English side and have folded and reformed a number of times over the years. Prior to the switch of countries they managed to go a horrifying 735 games without a win, finally beating  Llanfechain in February 2022.

Things weren’t going much better for them this season. Here they took a walloping from Whitchurch Alport’s second string, finishing the season second-from-bottom, with Shrewsbury Juniors’ folding saving them from relegation. Hopefully Llanymynech will regroup in the close season and better fortunes will follow.

Thanks to Robyn for her photos, my camera failed completely! My shots are all from a mobile phone!