Why Mrs Rooney doesn't want to live next to houses like the one SHE grew up in: Wayne and Coleen object to plans for affordable homes near their sprawling £5m mansion

The North-South divide is blurred in Prestbury, where the multi-millionaire footballers of the two great Manchester clubs make their homes.

There is a scent in the air as you drive along its sunken lanes, not only that autumnal blend of burning wood and rotting leaves — but of money.

This Cheshire village, a few miles north of Macclesfield, is one of the richest places outside the South-East of England — part of a triangle of wealth formed with the nearby settlements of Wilmslow and Alderley Edge.

There are some cheaper houses in Prestbury — think £900,000-plus for a four-bedroom bungalow — but very few are ‘affordable’ in the sense the Government means: ones that young couples on average incomes have enough money to buy.

So when a local developer suggested building five ‘affordable homes’ as part of a small ‘executive’ development — 15 houses in total — on the outskirts of the village, it might be expected that its more fortunate inhabitants, particularly those from humble backgrounds, would be in favour of the plan.

After all, Coleen Rooney, wife of Manchester United and England captain Wayne, knows what a struggle life can be. Her mum was a nursery nurse who grew up in a rough area of Croxteth in Liverpool.

And today, even though the Rooneys’ home on the outskirts of the village is a mansion worth about £5 million, they must remember the days before their world transmuted into an endless round of Caribbean holidays, Bentleys — and disappointing England performances.

But do they want affordable homes for people from similar backgrounds as themselves to be built near them and lived in by people not unlike themselves? Certainly not!

‘Let’s not ruin our village,’ Mrs Rooney wrote this week in a letter to her local planning authority, Cheshire East Council. ‘The development would be in direct conflict with the national policy to protect green belt land.’

She went on to warn of the dangers of increased traffic and damage to the ‘special landscape, character and appearance of the area’.

In a show of support that points to the village’s unusual make-up, Mrs Rooney was supported by the wife of glam-rock band Slade’s frontman Noddy Holder. The Holders are long-standing residents of Prestbury and live on the same secluded cul-de-sac as the Rooneys.

‘Prestbury is an historic village and we need to preserve its character and setting,’ wrote Suzan Holder.

On Thursday, the council planning committee threw out the offending application, though it may yet be resubmitted.

All very well — except that when it comes to altering the ‘special landscape, character and appearance of the area’ the Rooneys have form.

Mrs Rooney’s concern for the green belt, expressed in suspiciously legalistic language, is no doubt sincere.

But some may be tempted to accuse her of, at best, nimby-ism and, at worst, double standards.

As Richard Morris, a surveyor advising the thwarted developers Harvey Wood, says: ‘There is a contradiction. The Rooneys’ house is like a mini office building and it seems slightly strange that they should object to what is a very sympathetic development on adjoining land.’

In architectural terms, the Rooneys’ house, completed in 2005, is a sprawling, characterless pile of the kind to be seen in many a faceless gated community in America.

The three-storey mansion boasts all the toys a star footballer would expect — swimming pool, Jacuzzi, gym, cinema — and all the style of one of the cheaper Las Vegas themed hotels.

Grecian columns and gold bath taps are said to grace the interior — but who really knows? Outside, the 20 acres of grounds are surrounded by high perimeter walls studded with security cameras.

There is nothing pretty about the house dubbed Wayne’s World, and no one in their right mind could describe it as being in sympathy with that ‘special landscape’ so treasured by Mrs Rooney.

There is also the fact that it replaced a perfectly adequate and less obtrusive five-bedroom property of 1930s vintage. In this, the Rooneys represent part of a controversial trend. The golden couple’s arrival in Prestbury presaged an influx of footballers, mainly from Manchester United and Manchester City and all stupendously well-paid and able to afford rocketing asking prices.

Peter Crouch, Wes Brown and Carlos Tevez have lived in the village at various times. The former England cricketer Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff is another well-known resident.

Of course, it wasn’t just footballers who turned this corner of Cheshire into a British Beverly Hills, but they played their part. One by one, perfectly good houses in the Prestbury-Alderley area were torn down to be replaced by palaces of varying degrees of ghastliness.

You see them as you drive around: partially hidden behind gates, walls and hedges, but still hideous — and most definitely not in sympathy with a beautiful landscape, framed in the east by the Peak District.

At its height in 2008, the mansion-building splurge prompted Thelma Jackson, a veteran Conservative councillor, to call a halt. ...DailyMail