If you want to understand a place, start with the threshold moments - the tiny transactions where hands meet, names are remembered, and favours are exchanged without fuss. In Broughton, that threshold is a bright, glass-fronted space beside the Village Memorial Hall: the Community Shop. It sells milk and stamps and sourdough, has a cracking wine list, fresh local produce and a busy coffee and cake café..  With a post office and many local suppliers and everyday staples it has everything needed for villagers. It also sells something less tangible but no less sustaining, a feeling that you belong here.

Broughton Community Shop didn’t arrive fully formed. It began in 2018 when the long-standing village store closed, and a group of residents decided that a five-mile drive for a pint of milk would be a car ride too far. With guidance from the Plunkett Foundation, the village set up a Community Benefit Society and launched a share issue; £20 a share, a wink to the SO20 postcode. Over 200 people invested and £51,000 was raised in six weeks. A shipping container was hauled in and turned into a “Shop in a Box,” opening on 20 August 2018, one day after the old shop closed. It was nimble, a little miraculous, and very Broughton. 

By December 2019, the shop had moved into its permanent home: a generous, light-filled space within the newly refurbished Village Memorial Hall -vaulted ceiling, coffee counter, and an on-site Post Office that brings peace to the logistics of daily life. A manager and assistant manager run the Post Office, while an enthusiastic team of volunteers do everything from sorting newspapers to working the till. The result is a social current as steady as the kettle: people linger, catch up, and  stock up on the necessities and luxuries.

The governance is as intentional as the welcome. As a Community Benefit Society, the shop exists not for private profit but to recycle any surplus back into local good causes. A monthly management committee -open to fresh hands and fresh ideas-decides on grants. Spend over a fiver and you can drop a green token into the box for a rotating beneficiary; the very first collection sent £500 to Broughton Pre-School and Primary. Coffee cups for Macmillan mornings, biscuits for fundraisers, donations to Andover Food Bank: the ledger reads like a list of quiet kindnesses. 

And then there’s what’s on the shelves. Broughton is lucky in its geography; it sits in a pocket of Hampshire where producers are close enough to know by name. The shop sources from Lyburn Cheesemakers and Lusso Leaf; ChalkStream’s Test and Itchen trout; Greenfield Pork; Brazen Butchers; Lockerley Estate venison; Broughton Honey; Wilton Wholefoods. River Test Distillery spirits sit next to Summerdown mint, Wessex Spirits, Flack Manor ales, and fittingly for a community that prizes quality,Hildon Water from just up the road.  

Across the High Street, another heartbeat has returned. The Tally Ho!- a 300-year-old village pub which closed in 2021 and stood still long enough for memories to gather dust. In 2025, volunteers did the stubborn, joyful thing: they brought it back. Weekends now unfurl in the garden; Thursdays and Fridays begin with the comforting creak of a bar stool. The Tally Ho! is run by the community, with proper real ale, pop-up food, live music, and a promise that the only house style is hospitality. The pub reopened after a three-year hiatus on 31 May 2025 and currently keeps accessible hours from Thursday through Sunday.

If the shop is the village’s pantry and the pub its living room, the Village Memorial Hall is the big, flexible space where Broughton breathes together. Refurbished in 2019, it hosts weddings, pantomimes, committee meetings, yoga classes, coffee mornings - whatever life requires on any given month. The bookings diary is perennially busy, and the lawn outside turns most gatherings into an invitation to linger. 

Look at the noticeboards and you see how this place organises joy. There’s the Broughton Amateur Dramatic Group (BADG), The Broughton Floral Club meets on the first Wednesdays. The Horticultural Society runs talks in winter, a show in summer, and discounts on seeds to keep the seasons circular. “Walk This Way” plans monthly rambles, often with a pub lunch midpoint. The Broughton Wheelers set off from the Tally Ho! in the warmer months, proof that the pub is a launchpad as well as a landing place. St Mary’s Lunch Club serves a two-course meal for a fiver and the cost-of-entry, really, is conversation. And the Broughton Singers - no audition required - keep the village in harmony from September to May. It’s a timetable of togetherness rather than busyness.

What emerges, in 2025, is a village that has opted in. The shop remains open seven days a week, tethered to everyday needs while pointing outward to local producers. The pub, saved by many hands, tells a story that new residents learn as part of their welcome pack: when something matters here, people show up. The hall, refurbished and relentlessly useful, is less a building than a verb. And just beyond the headlines, there are the allotments, the school, the church, the clubs-the subtle infrastructure of care that means nobody is only passing through. 

Ask a volunteer what they value most and the answers sound like a chorus: the first-name hellos; the way teenagers get their first Saturday job! Working alongside someone who remembers them from pre-school; the feeling that your spending power can be a vote for local jobs and better land use. The green token in the shop is a totem of that idea: you buy your butter and, with a small plastic click, also buy your future. There’s also a conscious effort to offer produce for the whole community, from custard creams to locally crafted handmade ginger thins – so whether you are on a budget or looking for a special treat,

Broughton will keep evolving. The Tally Ho! will add more music nights; the shop will find new producers; the hall will host another play that makes grandparents beam. The point isn’t perfection. It’s participation. “For the village, by the village” isn’t a slogan here -it’s the business model, the cultural strategy, and the daily practice. And, as anyone who’s stood at that threshold can tell you, it tastes a lot like home.

Hildon is proud to support the Broughton Village Shop and Pub, helping to keep the heart of the community thriving. From sponsoring the refurbishment of the community hub to backing local art exhibitions, Hildon is committed to nurturing village life and creativity. With many of the Hildon team living right here in Broughton, this support is more than sponsorship - it’s a celebration of the place we all call home.