For outsiders requiring a social map of the county: Cheshire West is residence to the well-heeled nation set. There’s the Cholmondeleys at Cholmondeley Castle (when not at Houghton), the Barbours at Bolesworth Castle, the Callander Becketts at Combermere Abbey and the Barnstons on the Barnston Estate. The east, of course, has noble varieties, like Candice and Charles Roundell, the brother of Chatsworth’s Lady Burlington, who stay at Dorfold Hall (presently on sale for £11.4 million) – but it surely’s additionally the place the new cash has infiltrated, significantly in the WAG-filled Golden Triangle of Alderley Edge, Prestbury and Wilmslow. Leading that pack from High Lake Manor, their £20 million new-build, are Wayne and Coleen Rooney with their brood of 4.
Bromley-Davenport is true: Cheshire is a shimmering land of beautiful art-filled estates, spruced up by society designer Nina Campbell and residential to grand households for generations; a land the place passers-by in trackies are off-duty worldwide footballers like Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne; the place Jimmy Choos are three-a-penny at the Alderley Edge charity outlets; and the place your neighbourhood storage is an Overfinch. The rural market city of Knutsford (largely owned by Henry Brooks, a third-generation custodian whose grandfather ran a sequence of furnishings outlets in Manchester) even has Aga, Oka and Bentley dealerships and a hyper-glamorous ultra-exclusive fitness center: CPASE – or Clare’s Space – owned by Clare Stobart, the blonde glamazon who married into the haulage dynasty. If you occurred to be a member throughout Cristiano Ronaldo’s ill-fated second Manchester United spell, you might need discovered your self on the treadmill subsequent to his girlfriend, Georgina Rodríguez (‘Hat on, crop top, leggings, no make-up, absolute physical perfection,’ says one fitness center common). And if you happen to occur to be a Cheshire mum or dad, your baby in all probability went to highschool with Harry Styles or Hugh Grosvenor (the duke was despatched to a neighborhood main). There’s even a ‘Daylesford of the north’: The Hollies Farm Shop, a family-run place insiders say you possibly can’t depart with out spending £100. To offer you a way of the sheer frothy affluence, Savills tells me that in 2022 there have been 700 £1 million-plus property gross sales in Cheshire East alone. This is the actual Northern Powerhouse.
So I’ve arrived, dispatched by Tatler to infiltrate the social scene in the Golden Triangle – and the place higher to start out than its apex? The social epicentre for the new-money millionaires, the footballers, their WAGs, the influencer elite and, very lately, Prince Albert II of Monaco: the San Carlo restaurant in Alderley Edge.
