Stoke Orchard

Stoke Orchard
Stoke Orchard
Shire county	Gloucestershire;
Region	South West;
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Cheltenham
Postcode district	GL52
Dialling code	01242
Police	Gloucestershire
Fire	Gloucestershire
Ambulance	South Western
UK Parliament	Tewkesbury;
	List of places UK England Gloucestershire 51°57′11″N 2°06′58″W / 51.9531°N 2.116°W

Stoke Orchard is a village or hamlet north-west of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, England.

Background

Stoke Orchard was formerly home to the Coal Research Establishment of the National Coal Board, which moved onto the site of a Ministry for Aircraft Production shadow factory run by the Gloster Aircraft Company adjacent to RAF Stoke Orchard. At one point the famous aviatrix Amy Johnson lived in the village.^[1]

The CRE site has now been demolished, the site cleared and it has been developed by Bloor Homes having built 145 houses, a state-of-the-art community centre, a village Shop and a multi-use all-weather sports pitch. This development has effectively doubled the size of the village.

Stoke Orchard is in the

Elmstone-Hardwicke, Tredington and Bishop's Cleeve. Politically the village is twinned with neighbouring Tredington, as Stoke Orchard parish. The two villages are part of a large church parish with two other villages nearer to the River Severn

.

Community

Stoke Orchard, in common with many villages in this part of Gloucestershire, has a sizeable church

Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) for the most ecologically-friendly village hall in the country. The church has early wall paintings of the life of St James - revealed when the whitewash applied at the time of the English Reformation was removed, and it was a staging post on the route for pilgrims making their way to Santiago de Compostela

.