What If Coronation Street Was Archie Street? Part Four

Well, luvs, we've covered a lot of ground, and now we find ourselves in the back ginnel running between Coronation Street and Mawdsley Street.

The back yards are tiny, poky affairs, with outside lavvies (once the only lavs in each household). Of course, they're not lavs anymore. But the Ogdens' at No 13 was operating as a second lav in 1980 (and probably well beyond). We're not sure about the rest.

The kitchens jut out into the yards and... well... back in the day they shared the Street magic of being much bigger on the inside than on the outside.

The kitchen windows were low-set (are they on the 21st century exterior set?), but indoors had kitchen sinks beneath them. From outside, they were pantry-sized cubby holes.

No 9, with its lean-to glass extension, was the only house to differ.

The Corrie back ginnel as it was on the 1982 to early 21st Century set.

Ken and Deirdre Barlow at Number 1 had a posh kitchen extension in the mid-1980s. This was downright peculiar at first.

The kitchen having expanded, exterior shots showed that the old back room window was now no longer. But it remained inside for ages - before the design team twigged and it was turned into an interior window, giving 'borrowed light' from the kitchen.

Deirdre, Ken and Tracy, embroiled in their late 1980s saga of brillo perms, shoulder pads, Wendy Crozier, and listening to Bros cassettes upstairs, noticed nothing odd of course.

Come on, Tracy luv, join in: 'You're a slave to fashion and your life is full of passion...'

The backyard dividing walls could be odd. Sometimes they moved. Elsie Tanner's yard might be quite large one week, with the yard wall by the Ogdens' back window, but another week the Ogdens' yard might be larger, with the wall by Elsie's back window. And so on down the terrace.

The real back ginnel between Archie Street and Clement Street was featured in the Coronation Street titles for a while back in the 1960s. The Corrie ginnel is cobbled. The Archie Street ginnel was flagged.

Coronation Street backs on to Mawdsley Street - once home to Len Fairclough and Martha Longhurst - and home to Len Fairclough's builder's yard for many years (although it wandered off briefly in a 1976 map of Weatherfield featured in the TV Times). It was in Mawdsley Street, at the congregational chapel, that Emily Nugent married Ernest Bishop in 1972.

Archie Street backed onto Clement Street, named after St Clement's Church, a longer street which ran across the junction from the side of the church.

Len's yard popped over to Balaclava Terrace in 1976 in an officially sanctioned map. And then popped back to Mawdsley Street. It made a nice break.

An old mystery from the back of the Street is the Rovers stairs, running up the back of the premises from 1960-1986. After the infamous fire of 1986, they changed direction during the rebuild. That's because the original route of the stairs was a bit impossible. They would have run straight past the back parlour window.

Also, the part of the Rovers building that juts out to join the strange viaduct... well, it's an amazingly narrow jut-out. In fact, to me, it looks like a wall with a door and an upper window in it. Bet Lynch would never have got down it, even if she'd pulled her chest right in. And as for Fred Gee and Betty Turpin! What possible use is it?

Even in the super-spacious Street of the 21st century, there's still no room at the inn in the Rovers extremity.

Now we've reached Rosamund Street, site of the modern (and frankly bizarre) viaduct arch. In the Archie Street universe, we've reached Cavendish Street. Across the road is St Clement's Church. Coronation Street once had a church opposite it - back in the days of the indoor exterior set. It was called St Mary's, but - from 1968 onwards - that was a thing of the past, replaced by an occasional glimpse of a wall with gates set in it, and, from 1982, by a building which quickly became the Graffiti Club, wine bar and disco.

Echoes of reality: The church opposite the corner of Coronation Street on the 1960s set. Martha, Albert and Ena queue up to get their hair done at Valerie's in the foreground.

Rosamund Street in those days, was, of course, a long, straight road - apparently one of Weatherfield's main arteries (though it never seemed very busy). From the show's earliest days we'd tended to hare off down Rosamund Street at times. A Rosamund Street shop was part of the Street's action for decades. From the days of Swindley's haberdashery and Gamma Garments to the days of Len Fairclough's shop, the Kabin, Rosamund Street was a must-see.

Rita Littlewood, of course, was at first employed as manageress at the Kabin, but later married Len thus becoming part owner, and, upon his death, owner. The Kabin gave us years of wonderful, cherished scenes of Rita and her assistant Mavis Riley.

'I'm telling you now, Rita, that pineapple thingie's giving me the creeps! I can feel its eyes on me!'
'Get a grip, Mavis! There's a lot stranger things round 'ere...'

Next door, of course, baker Joe Dawson opened up a genteel little tea shop in 1978, causing the Kabin's café to close, and, in 1980, this genteel little emporium was bought by one Jim Sedgewick, who turned it into a rough and ready transport café.

In 1990, Rita sold the old Kabin and moved to a brand new one in Coronation Street. But Jim's Café continued to be featured. And here comes another mystery...

After a while, the old Kabin simply disappeared.

The doors to the Kabin and Jim's faced each other across a small, covered lobby.

The Kabin door remained for a while after Rita had decamped, seen from the interior of Jim's whenever somebody opened the door to enter or exit. But then, suddenly, without explanation, the old Kabin door disappeared, and was replaced by an advertising or community notice board. Jim's Café was suddenly at the end of a terrace of shops - and there was no sign of a covered lobby - or a shop next door where the old Kabin should have been - and no sign that part of the terrace had been demolished either.

Never mind, cock.

What a difference a decade makes! In 1984, it was Mavis, Rita and the pineapple thingie. In 1994, the old Kabin had vanished.

Next time I'll be takin' a look at the other side of the streets - Coronation and Archie - to delve more into't past and some of its oddities.

Anyway, I'm off to bingo and that new Pizza Hut in Esmerelda Street with Ida Clough tonight - so I'd better be makin' tracks. Should be a great night. You know worra laugh she is.

Part 5 is HERE

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?

Part 2 is HERE.