The hub of the village is centred 3.5 miles (5.6 km) east of Lambourn and has a sub-community within its bounds, Little or South Fawley.

The area is wholly on part of the escarpment of the highest uplands in the county which cross into south-west Oxfordshire, the Berkshire Downs.

Most of the land to the west, including Lambourn, has only north–south public roads with the area in between, which is made up with high fields, commons and small woods, accessible by bridleways and footpaths.

[4] This briefly appeared in medieval records as an ecclesiastical parish of its own and to have had a church in the time of Henry II who confirmed its appropriation to Hurley Priory.

[8] Fawley was the poor and depressed home of author Thomas Hardy's paternal grandmother, Mary Head; the main character in Jude the Obscure, stonemason Jude Fawley, lived in the fictional village of Marygreen, and a relative, one of Hardy's biographers, links the memories of this woman, who had a very depressing childhood, to the book's bleak start.

[9] William Bradshaw, D.D., vicar of Fawley (1717–1723), served equally as Bishop of Bristol and Dean of Christ Church, Oxford for the remaining six years of his life.