Pagford is the fictional village where J.K. Rowling’s novel The Casual Vacancy is set.
The story takes place in an English parish called Pagford, whose apparently peaceful surface hides long-running disputes over class, local government and access to social services. The death of parish councillor Barry Fairbrother creates a vacant seat and intensifies those tensions.
Pagford is not part of the Harry Potter world. Readers sometimes mix it up with Hogsmeade, the fictional wizarding village, or Little Whinging, the Surrey suburb where Harry lives with the Dursleys. Pagford belongs entirely to Rowling’s adult social novel.
The setting allows the book to examine how decisions made by a small local authority affect different families. Its plot is driven less by adventure than by competing interests among residents, councillors and young people. The novel was Rowling’s first adult publication after the Harry Potter series.