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It is well known, like Alderley Edge , for having many famous residents, notably footballers, stars of Coronation Street and rich Manchester businessmen. It is an affluent area. The local Aston Martin dealer's sales account for more than one-fifth of the UK sales of £100,000-plus Astons. Wilmslow is a desirable area in which to live, and is part of the so-called Golden Triangle in the north west together with Hale and Bowdon. It grew in popularity in the Victorian era as a most desirable area for wealthy Manchester businessmen to move out to once the railways arrived and connected the towns. Wilmslow is a railway junction where the electrified line from Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly bifurcates. One line continues to Manchester via Handforth and Stockport , the other continues via Styal and Heald Green . The latter route is commonly known as the Styal Line . There are frequent services to Manchester, Stockport and Crewe plus an hourly service to Shrewsbury and Cardiff . There are a few trains to London Euston . The A34 Manchester to Newcastle Under Lyme road bypasses the town centre to the east. Manchester Airport is a few miles to the northwest. Wilmslow has a municipal leisure centre located near the train station. It offers a range of indoor facilities including courts, gym equipment and two indoor pools, one of which is a heated childrens pool. Wilmslow High School is the only secondary school in Wilmslow and is a large comprehensive school that also includes a 6th form for A-level studies. The town has many primary schools, both comprehensive and private (including single sex schools). Wilmslow also contains a public library, fire station and police station. Two, free, weekly local papers are distributed to the residents of Wilmslow, they are the "Wilmslow Express" and the "Manchester Metro News". Its name came from Anglo-Saxon ''Wīghelmes hlāw'' = "mound of a man called Wīghelm". GEOGRAPHY The town centre is focussed upon Bank Square, Grove Street and Water Lane. Although Bank Square has traditionally provided the location for many of the town's banks, the name in fact originates from the bank, or slope, leading down to the Carrs recreational fields and up towards the train station. The River Bollin flows through the Carrs and once provided the power source for nearby Quarry Bank Mill , now a National Trust site. Before the railway came, Wilmslow was only a few Farm s and a Church . NOTABLE EVENTS Wilmslow was in the international media in March 1997, when an IRA bomb exploded at the train station. Nobody was hurt. In the general election of the same year, the parliamentary constituency of Tatton, in which Wilmslow falls, made headlines as part of the "sleaze" accusations levelled against the then Conservative Government. Tatton MP, Neil Hamilton , was accused of accepting cash for tabling Parliamentary questions, and subsequently defeated in the election by independent candidate Martin Bell . PEOPLE FROM WILMSLOW Alan Turing , the driving force behind the Colossus machine for cracking the German Enigma cypher, is perhaps Wilmslow's most notable resident. Turing committed suicide in his Wilmslow home in June 1954 by eating a Cyanide -laced apple. Wilmslow has featured in the novels of the writer Alan Garner , with the Black Lake (Lindow) apparently housing a witch. Garner is perhaps best known for his books '' The Owl Service '' and '' The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen '' and '' The Moon Of Gomrath '' which are set in nearby Alderley Edge . The British Indie Rock band Doves met at Wilmslow High School in the 1980s. PLACES OF INTEREST
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