Our story
Some of the best people here are the hardest ones to find
The last time I looked for a painter in Silchester, Nextdoor recommended me one in Watford.
Hardly a day passes without somebody in a village group asking for a gardener, a plumber, a piano teacher. People answer, generously, and then the thread slides out of sight and the next person asks the same question a fortnight later. The quality is already here. It’s just the finding bit which is broken.
EveryVillage is an attempt to gather what these villages already know about who does what, and hand it back.
I grew up here
I'm Oliver. I grew up in Silchester and spent the first eighteen years of my life in the village.
Silchester summer holidays
Learning to drive
Learning to drive in Tadley, parked in the Sainsbury's car park (only four attempts needed to pass).
And coming back
Eventually I came home. This is School Lane, picking blackberries out of the hedge.
EveryVillage is built because I've used so many of the local services in this area. I want to build a space that helps independent services here become more visible, and a place where local people know where to look when they need something done.
What EveryVillage is
EveryVillage is a local directory built around the places it serves.
We list businesses and services that actually work in and around Silchester, Tadley and the surrounding villages, and we try to make the useful ones easier to find.
It’s free to use. No adverts, no commission, and you deal directly with the business.
I speak to every partner myself and confirm their details rather than simply scraping them from the internet. The aim is simple. Build a directory people can use easily and trust.
Why EveryVillage exists
Because the best people here are often the hardest ones to find.
The recommendations already exist. They’re just scattered. Someone asks the village Facebook group for a gardener, a plumber, a piano teacher, a mechanic, and people answer, usually generously. Then the thread slides out of sight and takes the answer with it. A fortnight later somebody asks the same question again.
The big national sites don’t fill that gap. Checkatrade only does trades, and whoever pays most gets the leads. Nextdoor sent me to Watford. None of it’s run by anyone who’s heard of Silchester or Tadley, and the further away the person you end up calling, the more of your money goes on the drive.
A lot of the local directories for Silchester and Tadley were built over twenty-five years ago, are not updated often, and don’t capture the extent of the talent here.
I know how good the people already working here are. Robin toured the world for thirty years as a professional musician, playing venues, festivals and concert halls, and now he teaches piano and singing a few minutes from my house. Ben has been selling and tuning pianos here since 1991. James has forty years in roofing. Nigel has thirty in other people’s gardens.
Not one of them was easy to find. Several have no websites at all.
The quality is already here. It’s the finding that’s broken. That costs those businesses work, and it costs the rest of us money we didn’t need to spend.
There’s a longer answer too, about a town in Pennsylvania where people almost stopped dying of heart disease and nobody could work out why. That one’s a story in itself.
How it works
I find the businesses first, mostly by asking around, and then I go and talk to them. What a listing shows depends on how far we’ve got with that, which is the first question below.
What is the difference between a claimed and an unclaimed listing?
Some listings are unclaimed. Those are built from what the business has already published about itself. Name, trade, where it works, any credentials it advertises. We haven’t spoken to them yet.
Claimed listings are EveryVillage partners. I’ve spoken to those directly, so the page has a description in their own words, their services, their contact details, their logo and relevant photographs of their business.
What does a partner actually get?
A page of your own, written how you want it and changed whenever you ask.
The numbers behind it. How many people looked, and how many went on to click your website, tap your phone number or open your email.
And me talking about you, in village groups, in person, and at whatever’s on locally.
Which villages does it cover?
Silchester, Tadley and the surrounding Hampshire villages. Silchester and Tadley have pages you can browse today, and the rest are on their way. If you’re based a bit further out but you work in these villages, you belong here too.
My business is already on here. Can I change it?
Yes, and you can have it taken down just as easily. Email hello@everyvillage.co.uk and I’ll sort it.
I cannot find what I need. Can you help?
Probably. Ask me. There’s a decent chance I know someone who isn’t listed yet, and if I don’t, I can usually find out who does it.
Where it has got to
So far, 19 businesses have signed up as partners, and there are plenty more listed that I haven’t got to yet. I’m keeping the focus on Silchester and Tadley for now. The rest of Hampshire follows from there.