Directory, UK wide
Woodwork UK
Over 2,000 pages, researched, built and live within a week.
What this build does
There was no one place for woodwork in this country. Anyone looking for a course, a club or someone to restore a chair had to wade through a general directory and pick it out of the noise, and the trade itself is barely online: of 327 furniture restorers now listed, 232 have a website at all. Woodwork UK puts the lot in one place, free to use, no booking fee, every link going straight to the person doing the work.
About the directory
Woodwork UK lists woodworking courses and schools, men's sheds and community workshops, furniture restorers, makers and places to buy timber, across the whole country. It is free to use and free to be listed on, it takes no bookings and charges no commission, and every listing links straight out to the provider. It covers 596 courses from 199 makers and schools across 37 places, eleven crafts from spoon carving to cabinetmaking, the men's sheds in the Men's Sheds Association's own directory, and 327 furniture restorers.
What it runs on
Astro
TypeScript
Cloudflare Pages
GitHubWhat we built
Everything in one place
- Over 2,000 pages: courses, men's sheds and community workshops, furniture restorers, makers and schools, and where to buy timber, each on its own page.
- 596 courses from 199 makers and schools across 37 places, sorted into eleven crafts, because a spoon carving day and a full-time cabinetmaking school are not the same thing and should not sit in the same list.
- Men's sheds taken from the Men's Sheds Association's own directory rather than scraped from search results, so a club that exists is listed and one that does not is not.
- Restorers sorted by what they actually do. A firm that sprays kitchen doors and a firm that repairs eighteenth century veneer both read as furniture restoration to a search engine, and the site refuses to treat them as the same trade.
Visibility for people who have none
- A trade that is barely online: of the 327 restorers listed, 232 have a website. The rest are found here or not at all.
- Every listing links straight out to the provider, with no booking taken and no commission charged, so the enquiry belongs to them.
- Free to be listed, and a form for anyone who wants adding, so a small workshop with no marketing budget can be found.
Built to be found, by people and by machines
- A page for every craft, every county and every town with something in it, so a search for what somebody actually types lands somewhere real rather than on a filtered list.
- Structured data on every page, and a published machine-readable summary of what the directory is and what it holds, so the answer engines can quote it correctly rather than guess.
- Researched, built and live within a week, with the data hand-checked rather than trusted, because a directory that lists things which are not there is worse than no directory.
How it was built to be found
A directory only works if each page answers one real search, so that is how it is cut: by craft, by county and by town, with hub pages tying them together and a plain-English explanation at the top of each. Everything is static and fast, every page carries structured data, and the site publishes a machine-readable summary of itself so answer engines can cite it rather than paraphrase it. It went live at over 2,000 pages, and Google is still working through them.
Searches it already shows up for, and how often in 90 days
- woodworking uk62
- courses in furniture making57
- weekend woodworking courses54
- uk woodworking53
- woodworking courses53
- build your own chair course52
- spoon carving course52
- woodworking classes49
- green woodworking course48
- woodwork courses near me44
Search impressions over the last 90 days, from Search Console. The site is new, so these are early.
What comes next for Woodwork UK
- More of the country, and more of woodwork: further areas, and new categories so more of the trade is findable.
- Suggested tools and materials for people learning, so the site helps with the doing as well as the finding.
Ready when you are.
Written and kept up to date by Ben Criddle, who builds everything Fixr Systems ships.Last reviewed 2 September 2026