Fairmile, Devon

For the boat builder, see Fairmile Marine

Fairmile is a hamlet in the English county of Devon. It lies on the former A30 trunk road approximately 6 miles (9.7 km) west of Honiton, where this road crosses the Talaton to Ottery St Mary road, in the valley of the River Tale. Fairmile belongs partly to the civil parish of Talaton and partly to that of Ottery St Mary.

The hamlet consists of land slightly smaller than the villages mentioned, but informally distinguished from them, a handful of houses, including the Fairmile Inn (now closed), a boarding cattery (Fairmile Cat Hotel est. 2010), a disused post office and a former blacksmith's workshop. About 400 yards (400 m) away is Escot Church, built in 1840 by Sir John Kennaway, the owner of nearby Escot House.

In 1999 the A30 through Fairmile was re-routed to a newly built dual carriageway section, about ¼ mile to the north of the previous road.

For a few years prior to the completion of the new A30 between Honiton and Exeter, Fairmile was the main focus of direct action protest activities against the new road, with permanent camps on both sides of the river valley. These camps, known amongst protesters as Trollheim and Fairmile (along with another nearby known as Allercombe), included a number of tree houses and networks of underground tunnels and bunkers. The occupants of the camps were eventually evicted in January 1997 by Bailiffs acting for the Under-Sheriff of Devon, accompanied by specialist climbing and caving experts. This was amid considerable national publicity, and led to the temporary celebrity status of the final occupant of one the Fairmile tunnels, Daniel Hooper, known by his nickname 'Swampy'.

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