The go-to local guide for a whole region

The brief

Banburyshire is the project that started our studio, and it is still the one closest to our hearts. There was no single place to find out what was happening in Banbury and the villages around it. Events, shops and services were scattered across Facebook groups, out-of-date directories and flyers in the library. We love this corner of North Oxfordshire, so we set out to build the guide we kept wishing existed, and to use it to test everything we would later recommend to clients.

What we did

• Built Meridien, our own content management system, to run the site. It is made for destination guides: places, businesses, events and walks all live in one place and link to each other, and it scales from one town to a whole region.
• Designed a calm, easy-to-read guide that puts events, places and businesses first, from the “town of cakes and castles” to the ironstone villages around it.
• Wrote a guide for each of twelve towns and villages, from Banbury and Bicester to Bloxham and Edgehill, each linked to the places to visit, walks and local businesses nearby.
• Mapped out walking routes with distance, time and difficulty, such as the Banbury Ironstone Heritage Walk and the Edgehill Circular.
• Built a directory of independent cafés, pubs, shops and trades, and made sure Google understands every listing and event, so they show up with dates, times and details in search results.
• Built it to load quickly even on patchy village broadband, and to cost very little to run.
• Brought in AI to help draft and check listings, with a person reviewing every change before it goes live.

The result

banburyshire.com has grown from strength to strength. It now lists more than 1,800 local businesses, covers twelve towns and villages and welcomes more than 5,000 unique visitors a month, with a monthly newsletter and a following across seven social channels. It also proved Meridien, which now runs our work for other regions, starting with Cotswolds Info. Every technique we recommend to clients has proved itself here first.