Fairford

Village in Gloucestershire, England, on the River Colne at the foot of the Cotswold Hills, 14 km/9 mi east of Cirencester; population (2001) 4,000. Fairford has a Gothic church built in the Perpendicular style in the 15th century, containing stained-glass windows made by Flemish artisans. There are extensive gravel-workings in the area.

Fairford has an airfield with a long runway, which was used in the 1970s for the test flights of the supersonic airliner Concorde. Thereafter, until the early 1990s, the airfield was home to refuelling and surveillance aircraft of the US Air Force. It now hosts an annual Air Tattoo (military display).

John Keble, founder of the 19th-century revival of English Catholicism known as the Oxford Movement, was born in Fairford in 1792.