Close to Manchester Airport, and not to be confused with the village of Hale, Hale Barns – named for the tithe barn in the area where local farmers in the Middle Ages paid rent in the form of a tenth of their harvest – is a prosperous village popular with Manchester commuters (it’s 7 miles from the city centre).

With good pubs and restaurants, small independent shops including prize-winning butchers, and a branch of Booths, ‘the good grocers’, as well as the Marriott Hotel’s leisure facilities and Hale Country Club & Spa on the doorstep, Hale Barns has everything you and your family needs.

Wide, tree-lined roads are home to a range of interesting and unusual properties, mainly post-war, many detached, with some modern and architect-designed, on spacious plots set well back from the hubbub of traffic. St Ambrose College, a Catholic grammar school for boys, with a stunning new building designed in the shape of a Celtic cross, provides Ofsted-rated ‘good’ education in a rugby-celebrating context, with many ex-students playing at premiership and national level.