Fearrington

<p> 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 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 1600 houses a nationally known luxury inn a five-star restaurant a bookstore and a spa drawing tourists and residents from all over. </p><p> 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 first comprehensive history of the village 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.</p>