Knutsford, United Kingdom

Knutsford town centre has several restaurants and pubs, coffee shops, boutiques, antique shops and art galleries. It has several supermarkets, including Booths, Aldi, Little Waitrose, Sainsbury's Local, Olive & Sage and two Co-op stores.

Tesco used to have a small shop in the town centre, which closed many years ago. The retailer had hoped to open a larger store on the edge of the town on Mobberley Road, but councillors in Mobberley objected to the proposed development, thinking it might result in more cars travelling through their village.

In 2008, Aldi announced plans to open a superstore in Knutsford, but construction did not begin until September 2012. The store officially opened in July 2013.

Barclays has a large campus site at Radbroke Hall on Toft Road just outside Knutsford, employing approximately 3,000 staff in IT and support functions. Before Barclays purchased the site, it was owned by The Nuclear Power Group.

There are many events in and around the town each year including the May Day festivities, the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park and the Cheshire County Show in the parish of Tabley.

The annual Knutsford Royal May Day festival is where hundreds of people along with farm animals, morris dancers and folkloric characters such as Jack in the Green parade through the town's streets and the May Queen is crowned. During the May Day weekend, there is also a funfair run on ‘'The Heath'’, a large field near the centre of Knutsford where the crowning of the May Queen also takes place. This is said to be one of the largest travelling funfairs in the UK, with a large selection of rides and games to enjoy.

Local folklore claims that Edward "Highwayman" Higgins had a tunnel running under The Heath, where he hid his booty.

There is a May Day custom, still observed today, of "sanding the streets" in Knutsford. The streets are decorated with coloured sands in patterns and pictures. Tradition has it that King Cnut, while fording the River Lily, threw sand from his shoes into the path of a wedding party, wishing the newly wed as many children as the grains of sand at their feet. The custom can be traced to the late 1600s. Queen Victoria, in her journal of 1832 recorded: "we arrived at Knutsford, where we were most civilly received, the streets being sanded in shapes which is peculiar to this town."

Knutsford has four primary schools (one of these is a Roman Catholic school); it also has a high school, Knutsford Academy, which also has a sixth form. Some secondary school pupils from the town travel to schools in Altrincham, Hartford, Holmes Chapel, Hale and Macclesfield. Some sixth formers from the town travel to colleges in Northwich and Timperley. Macclesfield College run some adult education courses in Knutsford and Age UK run computer courses for the over 50s at Knutsford Library.