Could be balloons. With sunset at 21.57 on 20 June (in Northern England), it was only half an hour after sunset. Balloons could have easily been high enough to catch the sun from over the horizon. Being illuminated by a sunset, orange is a likely colour. The reason they disappeared would be related to when the sun finally set from their altitude.

I personally favor the landing lights explanation. I live near the approach route to an airport and sometimes you can see the powerful landing lights of commercial airplanes seemingly standing still in the air. Of course this is not so: these lights are incredibly powerful and can be seen from tens of miles afar as the airplane slows steadily en route to approach. It's an optical trick.
Russian airplanes (Ilyushin 76s are commonly used by cargo airlines) have even more powerful landing lights, often with an orange tinge to them.

Is there anymore information with the e-mail Ian ?
Mauro's explanation is very plausable, whilst Oldham isnt next door to Manchester airport, its close enough to see planes lights, and to add to that a lot of the flight patterns have changed over the last few years with the opening of that new runway.
Imagine a plane coming towards you then slowly turning, one of the lights will go out quite quickly as its hidden by the body of the plane and the one you can still see will graduly dissapear as the plane turns more and the cone of light is itself hidden by the lamp surround. And the thing will still be far enough away so its engines will be quite muted.

I have no further information yet. I know that one of the outer beacons for Manchester Airport was up Scouthead in Oldham so you would get planes that far out in holding patterns for the airport.