Coronation Street Blog: Granada TV archive goes on display in Manchester

The entire archive of Granada TV's history was thought to be lost. However, it's been housed for the last 30 years in a warehouse in Yorkshire, has now been unearthed and is going on display in Manchester.

The Granada archive will contain many Coronation Street objects that will make up a new British Pop Archivea at Manchester's John Rylands Library. Many items have not previously been seen in public before. The extensive Granada company archive spans the 1950s to the 1990s

Prof Hannah Barker, professor of British history at the University of Manchester and director of the John Rylands Research Institute, told the BBC.

"There's something about seeing music that you're very familiar with and seeing its genesis on paper, and people's edits, that's very exciting."

The extensive Granada company archive spans the 1950s to the 1990s. As well as pop music, the archive will cover all forms of popular culture. The library will also house the archive of Joy Division and New Order manager and Factory Records co-founder Rob Gretton.

Documentary-maker David Olusoga, who is professor of public history at the University of Manchester, described the Granada archive, which spans the 1950s to the 1990s, as "a major record of a crucial era in TV history".

Prof Barker said: "Everybody knows Coronation Street, which is really important as one of the first programmes that takes the lives of working class people seriously. But also Granada's news and documentary outputs were really influential."

She said the Granada files had been stored in a warehouse in North Yorkshire for the past 30 years and had not been accessible.

"When I first started asking people in Manchester if they knew what had happened to the archive - because I knew that one used to exist in Manchester which was accessible to researchers - people said they thought it had been destroyed. But I did a bit of digging around, and located where it was, and it was perfectly safe and intact. ITV were very happy actually to return it to Manchester."

Prof Barker said her ambition for the archive is to encompass "post-war popular culture across the whole of the UK", including youth culture and countercultural movements. She is "just as interested in the audiences and fans as I am in the stars", she said.

The first exhibition, titled Collection, will open at the John Rylands Library on 19 May.

Glenda Young

Novelist published by Headline