The Orchard is only 250 yards from Fairford Market Place where there is a wide variety of shops ranging from essentials, a post office, bank, chemist and supermarket as well as speciality shops and antique shops. Cirencester is only nine miles to the west and Lechalde four miles to the east. There is a large indoor swimming pavilion for the benefit of all the owners at The Orchard.

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The Orchard : The turrret of a lodge house announces the entrance to The Orchard. There are 23 cottages each with its own garage and conservatory, the perfect place in which to soak up the warmth of the sun and to enjoy a newspaper or good book. There are also two apartments. Ten of the cottages overlook the main garden lined with fruit trees. The swimming pavilion can be approached through the garden or the archway next to the manager's office.

Fairford is well placed to enjoy Cotswold life. The Roman town of Cirencester with its modern shopping centre and world-renowned Corinium Museum lies nine miles to the west. The pretty riverside village of Bibury with its ancient terraced cottages orf Arlington Row is five miles to the north and four miles to the east is Lechlade, the highest navigable point for boats on the River Thames.

Facilities include a resident estate manager, attractive gardens and swimming pavilion in the inner courtyard. All the cottages and most of the flats have garages. It is an easy walk to the town centre.

Fairford : ‘A PRETTIE UPLANDISH TOWNE‘ Set on the gentle slopes of the Coln Valley as it meaders to the watershed of the Upper Thames in the south-eastern corner of the Cotswolds, affording delightful river walks north and south. Fairford is still the 'pretty town' of which Leland, antiquary to Henry V111, wrote when compiling his itinerary of royal lands.

The town has been Crown property since the Norman Conquest when Matilda, wife of William 1, had the manor confiscated from Brictric, a handsome Saxon lord who had spurned her advances while on an ambassadorial mission to her father's court in Flanders. Unlike many Cotswold manors, Fairford never passed into ecclesiastical ownership but remained Terra Regis until the reign of Elizabeth 1.

The Tudor touch is at the core of much that shaped Fairford from the early trade centred on its vast sheepwalks. St Mary's church is the legacy from the golden age of the Cotswold wool trade. Rebuilt by John Tame, a wealthy woolmerchant appointed as royal steward of Fairford by Henry V11, the church is famed far and wide for its 28 stained glass windows. They are the only mediaeval set in the kingdom to survive in their entirety.

Fairford gained its status as a market town in 1135, and the wide main street and sprawling Market Place reflects its development. The area once known as Mill Town tithing, separated from the Market Place by the River Coln, is on the site of the ancient ford from which Fairford gets its name. 'Fair' meaning 'easy to cross' derived from the Saxon Fagrinforda. Evidence of early settlement of the parish was unearthed last century when a Saxon necropolis was discovered at the west end of the town. Even earlier Romano-British remains have been found close to the east of the town.

Today Fairford wears its historic past with dignity, trading as a small market town but with the community spirit of a large village. The finely pinnacled 15th century church, the solidity of the community centre built in 1738 and the ramblilng range of The Bull Hotel - an early 16th century guild hall - make an attractive architectural sweep and historic statement in local stone.