Fairford, United Kingdom

By the 15th century the land of Fairford was managed by wool merchants John Twynyho and John Tame, after George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence was forced to give up his lands after being tried for treason.

In 1608, the inhabitants of Fairford were mostly agricultural labourers or artisans.

Fairford Park, to the north of the town, was built by Andrew Barker in the 1660s and became part of the manor house grounds. It was later turned into a deer park by James Lambe, with an obelisk built to mark the edge of the grounds. The park remained in the Barker family until it was sold to Ernest Cook in 1945.

The first record of an inn appears in 1419, and more inns appeared over the centuries owing to Fairford's location on routes between larger towns; in 1755, seven innkeepers were licensed in Fairford. Stagecoaches often called at Fairford on their way to Gloucester, Cirencester, Bristol, Oxford or London.

The first outbreak of the 1830–31 Swing Riots in Gloucestershire was in Fairford on 26 November 1830. Farming machinery which was being manufactured in the town was destroyed by protestors, who then joined forces with those from the surrounding villages of Quenington, Hatherop, Coln and Southrop.

By this time there were pounds, in the town as well as a village lock-up that had been around since at least 1809.

RAF Fairford was constructed in 1944 as a joint British and American base.

From 1947 to 1959, Fairford housed 1,200 Poles in The Displaced Persons Camp who had been displaced due to the Second World War. The site had originally been an American Air Force hospital that had been built during the war. The buildings were then repurposed for the camp, before being demolished in 1977.

In March 2003 'Flowers to Fairford' was held as a protest against the use of RAF Fairford as the base for the 14 B-52 bombers aircraft which were used to bomb Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Several thousand people attended and there was a large police presence, but the event passed off peacefully. A coach load of people intending to protest was stopped in Lechlade under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and searched by police and sent back to London. Ninety of the detained demonstrators formed Fairford Coach Action and sought legal recourse against Gloucestershire constabulary. The group stated that:"On 22 March 2003, the police used surprisingly extreme tactics to prevent more than 120 activists from reaching [the] legally sanctioned anti-war demonstration in Fairford, (Gloucestershire, UK). The demonstration outside a US Airforce Base in Fairford was well attended with estimates of up to 5,000 activists attending. Among the scheduled speakers on the day were writer George Monbiot and Caroline Lucas (MEP). The people who police prevented from attending were a diverse group with a broad range of affiliations. The main thing that they had in common was the desire to travel from London by coach and the intention of joining the legal protest in Fairford. Two of the four main scheduled speakers for the Fairford demonstration were travelling on these coaches from London. After the coaches had travelled two and a half hours from London, the coaches were stopped by police just miles from the demonstration. Using section 60 powers (of the Public Order and Criminal Justice Act 1994) police searched the coaches for weapons for one and a half hours. The passengers cooperated with this search, and they were invited to reboard the coaches when the search concluded. No arrests were made and no items found. After all the passengers boarded, the coaches were escorted immediately back to London under a continuous 9–12 vehicle police escort."In 2013, after appeal, Gloucestershire police's actions were found to be unlawful, and included breaching "protesters' rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly." Some of the demonstrators involved were awarded upwards of £4,000 in compensation by a judge after taking their claim to court.

In July 2007 Fairford suffered unseasonably high rainfall which led to major flooding of 64 homes on Milton Street and London Street as well as in some other surrounding areas. This meant that many of the annual events had to be cancelled.

In 2013, a female skeleton was found in the River Coln and was later discovered to be of Sub-Saharan origin. The remains were estimated to be around 1000 years old (between 896 and 1025 CE) and it is thought that the woman was around 18-24 when she died. Until this discovery, the earliest known Africans in Britain were from the 12th century.