The residents of the village where Harry Styles grew up are hiring superfans to give new guided tours of the area.
The village of Holmes Chapel in Cheshire has seen over 5,000 visitors in the last year who have come to see where the artist spent his early life. As such, Holmes Chapel Partnership, a community group, will be holding an audition day for tour guides later this year.
One popular spot visited by Styles fans is the bakery where he worked part-time before he became part of One Direction, which has a lifesize cardboard placard of Styles holding a white loaf.
Tours will also have stops at Styles’s former schools, the terraced cottage where he grew up, and a nearby Chinese restaurant where he once took Taylor Swift.
Another site frequently visited by fans is the supposed location of his first kiss – a railway bridge called Twemlow Viaduct, which some have “risked life and limb” to visit as it is next to a notoriously busy road. It is also known affectionately as ‘Harry Wall’ and bears the signature of the star, scrawled his name during a biopic released in 2013. Fans who visit have also written their own names on the wall near where he wrote his.
Peter Whiers, the chair of the Holmes Chapel Partnership, said they were expecting “significant” demand for the new tours, which are expected to begin in June and run until September.
He added via The Guardian: “Even during the wet winter months, Harries have continued to visit, braving muddy banks and wet fields to pay homage at Harry’s Wall.”
In February, a court heard that a woman accused of stalking Styles had sent the singer 8,000 cards in less than a month.
Myra Carvalho, 35, sent the soloist and former One Direction member handwritten letters and ordered numerous cards for him online that were subsequently sent to his address, Harrow Crown Court was told (via BBC News).
According to prosecutors, some of the cards sent to Styles by Carvalho were wedding-themed. Two of the letters were hand-delivered to the ‘As It Was’ artist’s address, they claimed.
Carvalho did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody ahead of a hearing at the same court on April 19.