Tuesday 18 October 2022

The Coronation Street Corner Shop: Side Door?

Opening the morning post this morning, whilst enjoying a lovely pot of English breakfast tea and toast with bramble jelly, one was delighted to discover that Joanie is installing an 'outdoor ambiance' in Derby. Of course, she has always been a leader in social trends in her neighbourhood. 

There was also a recent, rather vulgar, innovation apparently called an 'email' from 'Rokey'. One much prefers Vellum Wove:

You write that the side door at the corner shop always led to the flat, and that it seemed to have dual entrances from the main premises and from the side door stairs. But I recently read that before Alf Roberts modernised the shop in 1985 the side door led into the living quarters. Who is right?

Um, with the changing architecture of the Street over the years, who knows? But we don't recall anybody entering the back room via a side door, and nor was there any evidence of such a door in a rare pic of that side of the back room during the Hopkins family's time at the shop in the mid-1970s. But it might be there.

Even if it was, it would still have been impossible because there was not enough space on the Street's then exterior set representation of the Corner Shop to allow the stairs aperture before the door. The non-existent ceilings were also fun. The Corner Shop's front bedroom window was almost immediately above the sign on the exterior set. But, in the studio, great expanses of wall above the door were often visible.

Not sure if the side door leading to the flat after the Corner Shop expansion in 1985 works that well either. The modernisation of '85 happened very rapidly, but how? The shop area could not have expanded without removing the stairs and relocating them and surely that kind of work takes more time than the storyline allowed? The stairs must have been relocated to head towards the back of the building, with a new landing at the top, as the side door remained in the same place.

But that was the Street and that was what telly was like then.

Lovely Kathy Jones as Trish Hopkins gets the worst of it from Granny in the back room of the Corner Shop. We were sorry when the character was dispatched as we really liked her - Trisha was a far more cynical '70s girl than our wonderful dizzy Gail. We wouldn't have swapped Gail's time with the mega cynical Suzie Birchall for anything. But we still think Trisha could have been given another niche in the Street. Anyway, back to the subject in hand: no side door visible in the pic, but the side window is present.

The modern street is not without its mysteries of course. Somebody recently pointed out that Dev's modern day Corner Shop has sprouted an office door which appears to lead into the area under the stairs at No 13.

For those still wondering, we whipped back to 1983 and took the vexing question of the old Corner Shop side door to Ida Clough when she popped into the shop for the morning barm cake order from the factory. She said: 'Three 'am, two cheese 'n' a corned beef.'