Fearrington: Creating an English-Style Village in the Carolina Countryside

In 1974, R.B. Fitch of Chapel Hill bought 632 acres in Chatham County, North Carolina, just outside Chapel Hill, with a vision of creating a community, a mix of residential and low-key commercial in the style of the English villages he admired when serving as a U.S. Air Force pilot in the United Kingdom in the 1950s. With his wife Jenny, he began constructing the project and today, 50 years later, Fearrington Village is a major development in the region with some 1,600 houses, a nationally known luxury inn, a five-star restaurant, a bookstore, and a spa, drawing tourists and residents from all over.

Fearrington Village was the first Planned Unit Development in Chatham County and one of the first in the state. It has influenced other developments and Fearrington residents have had an effect on the state's economy and politics. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Business Hall of Fame has called Fearrington Village "an example of an exquisitely planned and executed community." This is the first comprehensive history of the village. It includes excerpts from R.B. Fitch's interviews in 2011 with the Southern Oral History Project at UNC, which are published here for the first time.