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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Lifestyle
Lee Grimsditch

Tiny houses, wonky cobbles and a bitter wind: Secrets of the 'lost Coronation Street'

For decades, Coronation Street was filmed in Manchester city centre - before its production relocated and its iconic set was demolished.

And this year marks ten years since filming of the long running ITV soap moved to Media City, situated on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford.

Granada Studios was the former headquarters of Granada Television, later ITV Granada, from 1956 to 2013 - and the place Coronation Street was filmed from 1960, until the move to the other side of the Irwell.

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The layout of the street itself was based on Archie Street, Ordsall, in Salford. The original Archie Street has long been demolished but it did appear in the original show's opening credits.

From its first episode until 1968, the complete set of Coronation Street was contained in one studio - both interiors and exteriors. This meant the houses were smaller in scale - at three-quarters the size of a regular home.

As a result, the soap's stars like Violet Carson, Pat Phoenix and William Roache, were forced to walk more slowly to appear in scale with the smaller houses. It wasn't until 1967 that production techniques had advanced enough to allow the soap to be filmed on separate interior and exterior sets.

The cast of Coronation Street on set in 1968 (Mirrorpix)

Initially, the set's pavements and cobbles had been painted on the studio floor. But, in 1967, the decision was made to build a separate outside set on some old railways sidings near to Granada Studios.

This meant that for the very first time, natural light could be used to illuminate the outdoor scenes instead of studio lamps. A year later, the new street was constructed but was still smaller in scale. But at least the pavements and cobbles were now real, even if they did run diagonally down the street.

Filming exterior shots on the newly constructed outdoor set wasn't always popular with the cast and crew due to the constant bitter winds that blew down the street.

The next big change for the filming of the soap came in 1982, when a larger street was built in a Granada Studios backlot. This time, the cobbles were laid running in the right direction.

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The properties were constructed to at only 70% of their real size, however. This is in contrast to the properties on the new Coronation Street at Media City which are built nearly full-size to accommodate filming in high definition.

The previous set at Granada Studios, used between 1982 and 2013, was made up primarily of two indoor stages for filming interior shots and an exterior set for outside filming.

Stage One featured the interior of the Rovers Return pub, which was never dismantled due to its constant use. A separate replica of the Rovers Return became a popular attraction as part of the Coronation Street tour when Granada Studios was turned into a theme park in 1988.

On the tour, Corrie fans could also visit sets where interior scenes were shot, such as Jack and Vera Duckworth's lounge, Rita's Kabin, Denise's hairdressing salon and the exterior street itself where the show was filmed.

The permanent street was built out of reclaimed Salford brick and roof slates for an authentic look. However, the buildings lacked interior walls and the chimneys were made of fibreglass due to the lack of structural support for brick ones.

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The Granada Studios Tour was closed on a Monday as this was the day the set was used for filming. The interior of the buildings were also used as offices for the show's writers or had props stored inside.

Following the end of the tours in 1999, the exterior set was revamped and extended with several new buildings added. To hide one of the larger Granada Television buildings from shot, a new viaduct was built behind the Rovers Return, parallel to Coronation Street.

Click below to take a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Coronation Street sets through the years

This introduced an inconsistency in continuity as the viaduct did not appear in the aerial shots of the show's opening titles. And there were other anomalies - one being the two windows by the fireplace in the pub's interior set, which didn't exist on the outdoor set.

The final scenes were filmed at the backlot set of Granada Studios on December 20, 2013. Following the move to Media City, the Granada Studios set re-opened in 2014 as a tourist attraction before being demolished in 2017.

The site of the old Granada Studios has since been redeveloped into a new cultural quarter in Manchester. In June 2023, a new Coronation Street experience opened at Media City, giving fans of the soap a chance to explore more of the famous cobbles and replica sets.

Does this story awaken any memories for you? Let us know in the comments section below.

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