At one time there was a rather grand house in Green Fairfield.
Orient Lodge stood on Hardybarn Lane, a long single track running from Waterswallows Road.
Built in 1896 for Samuel Swann Brittain and his Arabic wife Emma there are accounts of the grand house of Orient Lodge employing dairy staff, farm workers and servants.
The Brittains landscaped their estate from open farmland with formal gardens, mature trees from Ashwood Dale and overseas. There are tales of an orangery filled with exotic fruit trees, beautifully built stables for a stud farm and shippons with luxuriously tiled interiors.
However quarrying began at nearby Tunstead in 1929 and gradually expanded, moving closer to Orient Lodge.
By the mid 1930’s a family called Bingham owned the estate and had already sold part of the land to I.C.I.
Robert Bingham kept the house on until he died in 1977 before its inevitable sale to I.C.I.
All that remains now is an overgrown tree lined driveway leading to a great cliff edge to the huge Tunstead quarry.
Read more about the Brittains and the Binghams at Orient Lodge on our Buxton Museum and Art Gallery blog: