The New Houses, Kabin, Salon, Garage And Factory - Completed In 1989

In Coronation Street, it seemed that the building of the new side of the street began in September 1989 and most of the building work was completed before the end of the decade. We've been exploring that story-line recently, but Ian has recently studied all the relevant episodes and has written to tell us that, in reality, all the major building work on that side of the street began and ended in 1989.

I now have all the episodes from August 1989 to January 1990 and have been able to study the building of the new houses, the story-line time frame and the real time frame, bearing in mind that the show was recorded AT LEAST three to four weeks in advance. I've read your stuff on here, and would like to add my findings - made whilst studying the episodes concerned this week.

                       

On-screen, early December 1989 (recorded October/November): a teaser glimpse of what is now Audrey's salon.

On-screen, January 1990 - recorded November/December 1989 - Eddie Ramsden shins down a ladder - with what would become Gail and Martin's home in the background.

It was a great story because here was the Street undergoing immense change. New Exec Producer David Liddiment had decided to update the show in the summer of 1989 and had travelled around real Coronation Street terrace disticts where he saw modern houses and industrial units springing up beside the old houses. This seemed perfect for Coronation Street, with the show about to go three times a week, allowing much more story-line potential. In the story, the factory and community centre frontages were demolished in September 1989 (in reality, August 1989). That side of the Street was then boarded off and the production team teased us with very occasional glimpses of the new side of the Street going up.

In an episode broadcast on 1 December 1989 (recorded November) we were treated to an aerial view of the site with work in progress. In an episode transmitted on 11 December 1989 (recorded November), we glimpsed the nearly completed salon. In an episode broadcast on 1 January 1990 (recorded November or December 1989) we saw Steve McDonald drive a JCB from what is now the yard in front of the factory unit and garage into the Corner Shop window - and glimpsed part of the frontage of what is now Gail's house. In an episode broadcast on 8 January 1990 (recorded December 1989), Ken Barlow drove up the Street to visit Deirdre and we glimpsed the completed Kabin, waiting to have its windows put in (I think one was already there).

On-screen, January 1990 - recorded November/December 1989 - all over bar the shouting - the new side of the street.

The evidence points to the new side of the Street being built in reality from August to December 1989. In January 1990, teaser shots of the completed houses appeared in various magazines (in the story-line the finishing touches were being made) and in February 1990 Des and Steph Barnes moved in - the first new residents.

Thanks for that, Ian - I've received a few queries about the new houses and all now seems clear. It was a very ambitious project for the Street and I remember enjoying every moment as the girls struggled to get compensation for losing their jobs at the factory, the building site lads brawled in the Rovers, Alan Bradley used a job on the site to terrorise Rita and Tina Fowler became involved with labourer Eddie Ramsden. And I love the way we were "teased" with glimpses of what was being built.

The new side of the Street was actually fully revealed to the public via a press photograph taken on 6 January, 1990, which appeared in some newspapers the following day. The last of the paving slabs were just being put in place. There was a hint that we may not have lost Mike Baldwin as a local employer - it was revealed a new factory had been built as part of the development.

The photograph reveals some rather dinky, fancy street lamps along the new side of the Street. Some newspapers called the new houses 'yuppy' and the lamps did give things a rather 'exclusive' look. But they were quickly replaced with more bog standard street lights.

Of course, Des and Steph Barnes moved in in February but, although they had an ice cream maker, you could hardly call them yuppies. Well, I think one or two in the Street did but they weren't, not really. Phew!

A great era for the Corrie.

UPDATED 31/08/23

Betty Driver

We were deeply saddened to hear of the recent death of Betty Driver - Betty Turpin/Williams in Coronation Street since 1969.

As warm hearted and good natured as the character she played, experienced performer Betty Driver was actually retired from acting and running a pub in Cheshire when Corrie producer HV Kershaw spotted her and asked her to audition for the Street. Betty always recalled with deep gratitude the support given to her by actor Arthur Leslie, the Street's Jack Walker, during her early appearances in the show, and she became firm friends with Jean Alexander - Hilda Ogden. The two ladies would often spend time chatting and making padded coat-hangers for their favourite charity between takes.

My own personal feeling is that Betty could lift a scene simply by bustling into it, and she had that magic quality of seeming to be everyday working class - the sort of person you'd have a giggle with if you accidentally clashed trollies in Tesco's.

The character of Betty Turpin was one of the Street's anchor characters, often just simply around behind the Rovers bar, but she endured her fair share of drama, particularly in the '70s and '80s. She arrived in 1969 as the sister of Corner Shop owner Maggie Clegg. In the early '70s, her husband Cyril was retired from the police force after attacking a criminal (who had been terrorising Betty) with a lead pipe. Cyril died in 1974, and Betty then endured the shame of the revelation that her "nephew", Gordon Clegg, was actually her own son, born out of wedlock during the war. In 1982, Betty was mugged, but her greatest triumph came during that decade when her employer Bet Lynch, recently taken over as Rovers chief, asked Betty to make her hotpot a regular on the Rovers menu. The hotpot, a very occasional feature for some years beforehand, became a legend - and a version actually appeared in real-life supermarkets in recent years.

God bless, Betty - we'll miss you. xx

The Truth About Betty's Hotpot...

Lovely Betty Williams (Betty Driver) - whose hotpot became an everyday fact of life on the menu at The Rovers Return in the 1980s.

Eee, Betty Turpin/Williams' hotpot. It's been a regular on the Rovers menu since Adam were a lad...

Oh, really?

Whilst it seems that a version of Betty's hotpot was first served at The Rovers over thirty-five years ago, studying hundreds of consecutive Corrie episodes from the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s, the hotpot was not a regular on the pub's menu - and indeed was a great rarity. The regular hot food at The Rovers in those days consisted of pies, pies, pies and more pies.

It was revealed in the early 1980s that Annie Walker always stocked Mertog's pies, apart from a brief break in 1978 when she bought them from Joe Dawson.

Watching the episodes, it is plain that Betty's hotpot became a Rovers menu regular during the great food menu expansion at the pub in the 1980s.

Funny, in't it - how reality differs from myth, chuck?

News of Betty's hotpot from the Coronation Street Blog here.

1983: Fred Gee, Bet Lynch, Betty Turpin, A Car And A Lake...

Sunday Mirror, May 1, 1983:

Looking ahead to the week's TV:

Coronation Street, (ITV, 7.30). It's time for a Bank holiday spree. Fred Gee (Fred Feast) takes Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear) and Betty Turpin (Betty Driver) out for a whirl around the countryside and a picnic lunch. But it doesn't work out quite as it should.

One of my favourite Coronation Street story-lines of the 1980s was the "Car In The Lake Outing" of May 1983.

Rovers potman Fred Gee (Fred Feast), trying to be a wow with barmaid Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear), tempted her with an afternoon out - a picnic somewhere "nice". He'd take her in his Rover 2000 motor car - the one which had once belonged to Rovers landlady Annie Walker (Doris Speed).

Bet was quite keen on the idea of a picnic, but not at all keen on being alone with "Fred Face", and so invited her trusted colleague Betty Turpin (Betty Driver) along for the ride.

And a "ride" it certainly was, with the Rover ending up rolling into a lake - with Bet and Betty inside it.

And when Bet finally made it back to dry land, it wasn't that dry either - because dear old "Fred Face" dumped her down in a cow pat!

Of all the women Of Weatherfield in 1983, Betty Driver and Julie Goodyear were the most called upon in the courage and endurance stakes.

Recalling the filming of the "Car In The Lake" scenario in the book The Coronation Street Story (Daran Little, 1995), Julie Goodyear said:

"I had on a pink skirt, a jacket and a very flimsy T-shirt and some plastic beads and a pair of white high-heels, and they gave me a brown plastic bin-liner with two holes in it for my legs. I stepped into that and it was tied round my waist. And of course the water went up as soon as we went in and the bag was immediately filled with lake-water. The car sank and we were both waist-deep in very, very cold lake water."

Betty Driver gave her account of the watery saga:

"Now, me wellies were full of water to start with, and I said to Julie, 'There's a stickleback in the water here, dodging all around me. I hope to God it doesn't go anywhere else!' We were terrified and there was a swan swimming by and every time it passed the window it hissed at us and I thought it was going to attack us."

The sequence took two days to film, and Julie Goodyear and Betty Driver received congratulatory bottles of brandy from producer Mervyn Watson, with notes thanking them for their hard work.

Uttered In The '80s - Part 1

Introducing Uttered In The '80s - Back On The Street's look back at some memorable Corrie quotes from the decade of shoulder pads, the Rubik's Cube and the ZX Spectrum.

The Rovers Return, 1986. Emily Bishop (Eileen Derbyshire), Rita Fairclough (Barbara Knox) and Betty Turpin (Betty Driver) have been discussing the latest twist in the long running saga of Derek and Mavis, whilst Terry Duckworth (Nigel Pivaro) looks on.

Emily: "I sometimes think Mavis isn't really cut out for love."

Terry: "I sometimes wonder if Mavis was cut off the back of a Bunty comic."

The lady in question, played by Thelma Barlow, pictured in 1982.