Harry Styles: Lovestruck fans flock to Holmes Chapel tours

Harry Styles fans have long obsessed over every detail of his life, romances and childhood.

Now the Harries – as they are known – are being given guided walking tours of the Cheshire countryside where the pop sensation grew up.

Tickets go on sale Thursday, with tours starting next week.

But the BBC got a preview, with a group of devoted teenagers. One of them, 17-year-old Jessie, said she was a “fan for life”.

She said it was “really interesting” to walk in the singer’s footsteps, considering places such as Twemlow Viaduct, where the singer had his first kiss, and Mandeville’s bakery, where he worked part-time.

The Holmes Chapel Partnership, which created the new walking route, hopes it will help improve road safety in the area.

The non-profit has recruited a group of superfans to lead the tours, which will take place throughout the summer.

Leading the preview tour was Gillian Calbi, a 23-year-old from New Jersey, USA, currently studying in Manchester; and Ben McCormick, 16, who lives in Holmes Chapel and attends Styles’ old school.

Gillian described it as her “dream job”, having been a dedicated fan of Styles for more than a decade.

“I’ve seen him in concert 10 times now and 16 times in total, including One Direction,” she said.

Ben described the application process as “tough”, explaining: “I heard hundreds of applicants applied.”

He didn’t think he would get the job, but he won over the recruiters with his local knowledge.

“They clearly decided they wanted to have a shot with me, just like Simon Cowell did with Harry.”

One of the first stops on the tour is the bakery.

It sells a wide range of bread-based products and sweets. So far so normal. But this is where Styles worked as a teenager, after school and on Saturdays.

A life-size cutout of Styles in his Mandeville uniform is on display, and fans scrambled to take selfies with him.

Caitlin, 18, has been a Styles fan since she was just four years old. She jumped at the chance to visit her hometown, saying: “You get to see where she started, where she lived and all the people she met, too.”

For Leah, 27, from Liverpool, it wasn’t her first trip to Holmes Chapel. In fact, she comes to the village every two weeks to visit Styles’ old haunts.

However, she has not yet been lucky enough to meet the singer. “I should like to catch a glimpse of him,” she said. “Fingers crossed.”

The man who hired Styles as a teenager, Mandeville owner Simon Wakefield, said he was “a really nice lad, so easy going and down to earth”.

The budding singer always turned up on time and was liked by customers, he revealed.

When Styles got an audition for The X Factor, he asked Wakefield if he could take a turn. “I said, ‘Yeah, no problem, go,'” Wakefield said.

“And it just exploded from there.

“It just goes to show that it can happen to anyone at any time.”

Styles soon became one of the biggest pop stars on the planet.

He rose to fame in the boy band One Direction before launching a successful solo career with hits including Watermelon Sugar and As It Was.

When he first auditioned for The X Factor, he described his hometown as “quite boring”, adding: “There’s not much going on there.”

But he admitted that Holmes Chapel was “picturesque”.

Now, the village has become a must-see for fans.

The Holmes Chapel Partnership said more than 5,000 fans visited in 2023 – almost the equivalent of the village’s population of 6,700 – and had previously visited the Styles-related attractions shown on its free maps.

Not all of the places Styles used to hang out made the new tour, though.

Fortune City, the Chinese restaurant where he took fellow superstar Taylor Swift on a date, was too far away to be included, organizers said.

The 180-year-old Twemlow Viaduct is a must-see for Harries and is on tour.

As well as being where the singer had his first kiss, it’s also where he famously wrote his name in the One Direction documentary This is Us.

Fans have now covered Harry’s Wall, as it is known, with their own messages to him.

On tour, they are encouraged to instead write on slate hearts, which they pick up from retailer Sam Dale and Son along the route.

Georgia, 18, wrote on her painting: “Harry brought us together.”

She explained that she and best friend Charlotte “really bonded with Harry” and went to see him last year to celebrate his A-levels. “It was a really great experience,” she added she.

Behind it all, there is an important safety message.

The two-and-a-half-hour tours, which cost £20 a head, were born out of the Holmes Chapel Partnership’s campaign for safe walking routes across the village.

In the past, fans have made their way to the viaduct by crossing a busy road, but locals say it is dangerous.

By taking visitors on a traffic-free route, tour operators hope to keep them safe.

When the tours were announced, Peter Whiers, chairman of the Holmes Chapel Partnership, said they loved “the enthusiasm people have for Harry”.

But he added it was a fine line to balance excited fans and the reality of a “historic village dating back to the 1400s”.

“So this year we’re taking a new route to keep visitors safe by hosting guided tours of popular Harry locations,” he said.

Tours will run on Saturday mornings from June 8 and on weekdays from July to September.