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!"
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.
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!'
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?
