Coronation Street came out of the 60s with the maisonettes towering over the terraced row, which made the street look rather dark and cramped. The maisonettes were constructed to help Coronation Street resemble a typical street in the 1970s, but constructing them took away two important places: the raincoat factory and mission hall, leaving only the Rovers and Corner Shop.For this reason, the building didn't last long before it was demolished, after Valerie Barlow was killed by faulty wiring. Following this, the council demolished the building. In its place, a factory and a new community center were constructed, as you can see below.
The factory was originally opened as the "Mark Brittian Warehouse", though before long the factory went up in smoke, paving the way for Mike Baldwin, the cocky southerner who bought up the factory and renamed it "Baldwin's Causuals" a denim factory.The street had lost No. 7 in the previous decade, so throughout the 1970s a bench sat in its place, though no residents ever questioned why the space left behind was only a little wider than the bench also they didn't question why the cobbles ran along their street instead of across. Next time we will have a look at the street in the 1980s, so keep watching!
Honourable mention to Corriepedia for information and dates.
8 comments:
I was surprised to see that top photo with actual masonettes built on the "other" side of the street, as I don't recall ever seeing it like that in the programme. It's possible as I didn't watch it in those days, but have seen all the episodes on the 3 Network boxsets as well as virtually every episode since 1972.
I always thought when Valerie was electrocuted Ken and her lived in a block of high rise flats close to the Street, rather that the maisonettes shown (and always assumed it was the block seen in the opening credits during that era).
So were the maisonnetes actually part of the set for very long? If so, I am surprised I've never seen that photo before.
Can anyone enlighten me?
They were built in the late 1960s and demolished in the early 1970s. Weird '60s architecture - I never saw anything like them where I lived!
From what I've seen of them, they looked like tower blocks, but with only one floor lol I wonder if they were meant to be taller?
I found a second pic of them on the street
http://www.corrie.net/profiles/places/set2a.html
The maisonettes were added in 1968 - this was when the first outdoor set was built. They were supposidly single storey flats on the ground floor and two-story flats above, so we did see the shole building. When Val Barlow died the council decided to pull them down.
They were definitely odd. But then they were built in the 1960s!
Fascinating! I shall have to go back to the Network videos for that period, and see if they were actually shown in any of them.
Interesting history, but what's that in the middle of the cobbles in the bottom left photo?
Maggie,
If I'm not mistaken, it looks like a huge puddle
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