AMATEUR dramatists needing a space to rehearse, mum and toddler classes and teenage rock bands now have a new tool at their disposal.

The Oxfordshire Village Hall Directory lists more than 110 halls for hire in the county.

For each hall, it includes information such as capacity, parking spaces, number of rooms and contact details.

It has been created by the Oxfordshire Rural Community Council to help villages market their facilities better to keep them alive.

ORCC community buildings adviser Lynne Newin said: “Village halls are really an untapped resource in the county and we have created this directory to make it easy for people to access the wide range of facilities on offer.

“We are hoping to see an uplift in the use of these buildings which lie at the heart of our rural communities.”

The halls for hire range from Little Milton’s Pine Lodge, a timber-framed building completed in 2005 with a vaulted ceiling giving a light and airy feeling, to Fifield Parish Hall in West Oxfordshire, built around 1850 as a Methodist Chapel and completely refurbished in 2009.

The trustees at Fifield raised £68,000 to refurbish the hall, and it is now used regularly for art classes and a cafe every Saturday morning.

Trustee and treasurer Lucy Maitland Smith, 61, said: “The directory strikes me as a good idea.”

The Thomas Hughes Memorial Hall in Uffington was built in 1975 with money raised by the village.

It now hosts events from touring bands, like John Spiers and Jon Boden of Bellowhead, to wedding receptions and wakes.

With increasing use, the managing committee is looking to improve the facilites.

Committee chairman Paul Armishaw said: “The directory is a really helpful way for us to promote ourselves outside our immediate community.”

One group which uses the hall is Cheeky Little Monkeys music classes for toddlers.

Classes can get a little noisy and are therefore run in village halls throughout Oxfordshire.

Co-owner and class leader Sharon Reece from Faringdon said: “When I started the company and I was looking for locations sometimes I would look on a map, sometimes go by word of mouth and sometimes just drive around looking for a village hall, so this would have been a great help to me.

“I absolutely rely on village halls, I wouldn’t take classes in my own house, and a village hall is an ideal location.”

The directory is searchable by district, parish and capacity as well as location maps.

Internal and external photographs are available for each hall so users can see if it is suitable for their event.

New village halls will be joining the directory over the coming months as it develops, with the aim to list all 273 halls in the county.