What If Coronation Street Was Archie Street? Part 2

So, luvs, welcome to Part Two of our little series on the differences between Coronation Street and its long demolished template, Archie Street in the Ordsall district of Salford.

Well, we often noticed the lack of chimneys. In Corrie, not Archie Street. This was obvious in longer shots of the exterior sets after the first set was moved outside in 1968, then recreated in brick in 1969 (backyards were added later). Coronation Street had no chimneys. So, how did Suzie Birchall lob a brick down one in a late 1970s episode? Lord alone knows. We only saw it in close-up, and afterwards it was gone forever. Coal fires were possible in the house interiors though, so I suppose nobody noticed the lack of the necessary up-above.

"Chimneys? Nay, lass, we didn't 'ave chimeys round 'ere in them days. We never noticed the lack
either. We didn't even 'ave whole roofs. AND the cobbles ran the wrong way. We just carried on. We were built of sterner stuff. You young 'uns don't know yer born..."

This strange state of affairs lasted until 1982, when suddenly Corrie had chimneys. And the graffiti littering certain walls, and general run-down appearance of the place, suddenly disappeared. And the house exteriors suddenly got bigger, and there was a building on Rosamund Street we'd never seen before - which became a disco and wine bar. We supposed it was all due to the fact that the 1980s were an expansive and upwardly mobile decade.

Archie Street didn't get bigger. It got demolished. The first families were moved out in 1968 and demolition followed in 1971. But Coronation Street had survived. And was booming.

Even in the new scheme of things, the Corrie exterior was still too small to accommodate what was supposedly inside.

In't '80s, the Street suddenly got chimneys, fully-structured houses, and even the cobbles ran the right way!

Next, we pause at Number 13, home to our beloved Stan and Hilda Ogden. Here lies the strange tale of the straightened wall.

Now, Stan and Hilda didn't ever have much to boast about. They weren't even 'on the phone' (landline, of course - no cell phones back then). Actually, to go off on a tandem, sorry, I mean at a tangent, this made them far more natural back street denizens of that era than most other Corrie residents. It wasn't until the 1980s that 50% of UK households were on the phone, and Coronation Street always seemed a bit too populated with phone subscribers compared to real life humble back street dwellers like me. In my street of twenty houses, only one person had a phone by 1981. Yep, by not having a phone, the Ogdens were being more true to back street life, as I and my true life neighbours were living it, than Elsie Tanner!

But their house was a typically twilight zone Corrie dwelling in other respects.

However, from 1976 onwards, the Ogdens had one thing to boast about.

And I'm not talking about Stan's canteen-sized serving hatch.

Nope. I'm talking about Hilda's murals or 'muriels' (1976-1978 and 1978-1988).

And a wall which flattened itself to accommodate them.

The Oggies had a contoured or stepped wall which miraculously flattened itself when Eddie flogged them the first scenic delight. I think the 'muriel' would have been even funnier with the contoured wall, but there you go. The Oggies' house was obviously very obliging. At times.

'Ee, Stan, I'll 'ave to 'ave a polite word with that wall before Eddie puts me muriel up...'

'Naice' Wendy Nightingale - the first of two wanton Wendys in the life of Ken Barlow - was far too polite to notice the scaffolding, plank, and cold, grey sky in the Oggies' hall in 1976.

Clopping on down to the Corner Shop, we discover several mysteries.

The Corner Shop resembled its Archie Street counterpart (the Daniel Clifton off-licence branch) in exterior appearance more than any other Corrie property. Particularly when it became obvious the Corrie houses had adjoining bay windows (sometimes, early on). The adjoining bays moved the Street away from the template design.

Elsie Tanner and Ena Sharples go hell for leather outside Elsie and Christine Hardman's adjoining bay windows in 1961. By the time of  Ida Barlow's funeral later that year, the windows were having a trial separation. They'd done it before, too.

Mouse-like Florrie Lindley revealed an unexpected brave side when she had the shop frontage drastically altered in the mid-1960s. The shop door was moved from the Viaduct Street corner onto the street itself. This was fine. Logical. Once again, the shop was a little small on the outside to accommodate what was within, but it was when you looked upstairs at the shop flat that the real problems began.

The flat's interior had too many windows and sometimes had its own kitchen and sometimes didn't. Bet didn't seem to have a kitchen and slummed it with Renee and Alf when it came to meals. But the kitchen was very evident at other times - particularly when Kevin and Sally lived there. And the flat was pleasantly lighted - by several windows which didn't exist outside. Where WERE those windows on the exterior set, some of us wondered? In fact, we were surprised when a bathroom window was suddenly revealed in October 1980 to accommodate a story about Tracy Langton getting locked in the lavatory. Where had it been all our lives?

Intrepid Alf Roberts to the rescue - up a ladder to coax the door key from Tracy Langton who had discovered a toilet at the Corner Shop - and locked herself in.

"We've gotta get outta 'ere, luv," - Kevin and Sally Webster are freaked out by the sudden realisation that the Corner Shop flat has too many windows.

In the next exciting episode, we look at a few more mysteries of the terrace, the viaduct, Rosamund Street and the other side of the streets (Archie and Coronation).

Now, I'm off to't pork butcher's before they close. I like to give my family a proper cooked meal every night - none o' yer tinned rubbish. You can ask anybody. Ask Ida Clough.

What If Coronation Street Was Archie Street? Part 1

Well, luvs, had a long break and things are all right here. Well, Ida's bought herself a new pair of neon pink fluffy mules, but apart from that. Talk about mutton dressed up as lamb...

Anyway, I was thinking about Corrie and its origins the other night and the long-gone template for the terrace, Archie Street, in the Ordsall district of Salford.

Of course, the terrace selected was just a template, and while Corrie used the actual Archie Street in its opening titles for a while, things soon began to alter.

Let's take a look (wi' a dash of humour, luvvie, cos we could all do wi' some), at how Coronation Street began and its original differences from Archie Street, then look at how things evolved...

For a start, Archie Street had no corner pub. Nope. Not a single one. So, you'll just have to go to't Flyin' Horse, won't yer? Or nip down to the corner off-licence. No Corner Shop, but an off-licence, part of the Daniel Clifton chain. Not sure if Florrie Lindley would've fancied it, but then she used to work in a pub...

The Archie Street terrace also had more houses and single bay windows - which were represented in Coronation Street for a time. The trouble was, in erecting a studio frontage, space was at a premium, so the bays became joined in Corrie Land.

With no Rovers in Archie Street, we dispensed with some mysteries, of course. Like how the Rovers toilets led into Albert Tatlock's house (even the addition of a tiny entry on the 1982 set didn't really alleviate the embarrassment) - and why there was a huge Select with a stage which would have stretched right across Rosamund Street, the same being true for the back parlour and kitchen.

Eee 'eck, Mrs Walker!

"My dear! The things I have suffered!"

The great Rovers 1940s Show in the 1970s - with Norma Ford, Bet Lynch and Betty Turpin giving it their all in the mysterious Select. Look out, girls there's a bus coming!

At Mr Tatlock's, mysteries were fewer, though we did wonder - as we did with all the houses - why they were so much bigger on the inside than the out. The hall wall beside the front door was sometimes wider than at others (as with the rest of the houses) and Albert once sprouted a door at the top of his stairs which would have led directly into Emily Bishop's (REALLY, MR TATLOCK!), but never mind.

Unlike Archie Street, the houses in Coronation Street had hallways. In Archie Street, the front door opened directly into the front room. The stairs were accessible from the back room (kitchen with range) and ran up the middle of the house. Just how you got the stairs and hallway into the Corrie frontages was a bit of a mystery. But then the place was teeming with them.

Like that dreadful time the lorry crashed into the Rovers in 1979 and Emily's house temporarily grew a new wall which blocked off her stairs. Thank goodness there was an outside lavvy as well.

As soon as you turned your back, strange things happened in the Corrie houses.

But a day or two later things were back to normal. And nobody had noticed a darned thing!

Mind you, Emily's upper floor was obviously not a very hospitable place. Some writer once said there was no place colder than an English bedroom, and Emily and Ernest's was probably the very worst. When Minnie Caldwell's house went up for sale in 1976, we were treated to a view of the Bishops' bedroom window, curtains gently fluttering, and grey sky and scaffolding behind them. BRRR!!

Talking of upstairs, Corrie houses had incredibly high ceilings back in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. So high, you never saw them - just an expanse of wall above the picture rail. Very odd as that didn't match the exteriors at all, with the bedroom windows lying low over the bay windows...

Archie Street never had a house with a collapsing frontage. But Coronation Street did. Number 7 succumbed to that fate in 1965. Looking at the ruined frontage, it's odd that it seems to have widened at this point. And the houses either side have obviously made way for its expansion. The area was made safe and a bench was placed in the space. Very odd. That's all there was space for. As one letter-writer to a national newspaper wrote in 1981, when Len Fairclough was planning to build a new house there: 'The only people that could live there would be Marti Caine and the Thin Man!'

Look how far the front door is from the bay window!

Well, ducks, I'll be off now. That's it for the first part. There's another on't way. Just to say, all this is written with great affection as I loved Corrie back in its first three decades. And for all modern day fans - well mysteries like the sudden arch near the Rovers and the fact that Rosamund Street is no longer a long road running on a straight course through Weatherfield are nowt new.

Wonder what the residents of Archie Street would have said if their environs had been subject to the same Twilight Zone madness as Corrie's?