Weatherfield Precinct Exclusive! - A Behind The Scenes Look at Corrie’s New Set

Do not adjust your television sets! January 2023 marks a new era in Coronation Street history as the fabled Weatherfield Precinct arrives on our screen. It's an exciting new piece of Corrie's history, I’m sure you’ll agree. As the show enters its 63rd year, how brilliant it is to start this new year with such an exciting new development! 

As you may have seen from recent tweets, the Coronation Street Blog was invited to the grand opening of this new set at the beginning of December. With an abundance of Weatherfield Precinct images on my new smartphone and that weird Christmas / New Year break, I thought to share some exclusive behind-the-scenes pictures with you lot!

Sit back, get a brew, maybe even a peace cake, and enjoy our behind-the-scenes photos, facts, unseen bits, and exclusive cast chat!

Welcome to Weatherfield Precinct!

My Weatherfield Precinct story starts on November 16th of 2022, with an email from our editor Glenda, asking me to 'save the date’ for this top-secret studio visit/press event. I was standing having a vape outside work, so I managed to keep my excitement top-secret, although I still couldn't believe it. I did the fan Corrie Tour experience in April - they showed us where the new set extension would be (that itself was no secret) It was essentially a building-site-come-car park with little evidence of any building work or construction in progress. Fast-forward 8 months, and I’m heading out to see the completed set as a media guest of my all-time favourite TV show - lucky or what? 

December 1st was soon upon me, and I met fellow Corrie blogger Sophie Williams, and eastieoakes writer Darren Hilbert, outside Manchester's ITV Corrie studios to see this exclusive launch. When the clock struck 12 we were ready to enter the world of Weatherfield. With no idea of where we were going, we were soon on the set of Weatherfield Police station inside the set itself! for a quick brew before heading outside to the precinct's grand opening. 

If you are unsure of the studio / Weatherfield world layout, check out this map made by Corrie blog contributor Ben @gaddasisbadass showing the precinct location; 

WEATHERFIELD POLICE STATION 

This blog post is about the Weatherfield Precinct but I thought I’d post these to give you an idea of the incredible attention to detail behind the scenes. I guess, in this HD era, they need to, but still ridiculously realistic. I also bought a new smartphone for the occasion so it would be rude not to!

            I took these images in the cop shop. (L) is front desk (R) is the sign inside the main door 

The staircase we see in the police station is real, and rather than it leading to a jail setting, it actually leads up to the Chariot Square hotel set, where various cast interviews took place during this day. Stood outside the cop shop for a vape break, we saw David Platt walk past, said hello to Daniel Osbourne, and I gawped at the gorgeous Daisy Midgeley (she is tiny!) before we headed upstairs to the hotel set to interview Ty and Fiz about the wedding build-up! No photos are allowed on that set but we did meet Alan and Jennie (who play the newlyweds) who walked on set, just as Sophie and I stood at the door, which was surreal!

Should you fancy, you can read that interview here 

THE GRAND OPENING 

Before the grand opening, a few cast members (who were available for interviews on the new set) assembled and walked over before we visitors were ushered around. Dev must have been busy filming, we didn't get a chat with him, but still great to see one of my favourite cast members in real life! Was he looking at me taking this shot? I guess we will never know! 

Should you want to see my video of this moment, click this link   On a re-watch, you can see Sally Dynevor (Sally Metcalfe) being interviewed over my shoulder! 

You can see from the photo above that this is a two-storey building built using the steelwork on the back of the Victoria Street set. All were built without interrupting filming, and the shop windows, doors, and businesses were made offsite in the construction workshop and fitted onsite. Several props on this new set are from the prop stores and may have been featured in older episodes filmed on the original Granada Studios lot! It's one of several environmentally sustainable tricks the team used to build the set. I've got a few more nuggets like that are still to come - do read on; 

To read more about the construction of Weatherfield Precinct - click this link 

To watch an exclusive Corrie Blog youtube video from the balcony (at the press day) - click this link

THE BALCONY  

The shops are an exciting development in themself, but discovering there’s a block of maisonettes above them, was another real highlight of this set visit. The balcony steps which lead to them were repurposed from the original Underworld factory set and reclad in black slips. The flats themselves do look ‘lived in’ which suggests to me that we either (a) will have one or two of our characters moving in, and/or, (b) some new characters could be introduced. The balcony is easily accessible for filming, and we had a good walk around it, so I expect some panoramic camera shots from that height advantage! The maisonettes have a front entrance that looks like this; 

THE SHOPS 

Rutlands Bakery 

You can just see the bakery, which sits to the right of the upper-storey entrance door, in the image above. This is one of the shops that are just a frontage, and the treats in the window looked good enough to eat (spoiler alert - they aren't real - this is to avoid food waste). 

Pound Outlet - Just a frontage to this shop but there looks to be a small and accessible front door, which I didn't try to access, that could certainly fool viewers. A pound outlet certainly fits in with the current economic climate. I imagine Ches and Gemma visiting here with Bernie. 

Peking Order

Also worth noting (although not mentioned in the press release) is that we have this takeaway sitting next to this discount shop. Maybe it’s a takeaway that closed, as the ‘R’ has fallen off the shop sign and the pound shop is using the shopfront for stock space! I imagine this is the set equivalent of ‘Tattoo'll Do Nicely’ it's seen but not mentioned. 

That attention to detail is what does it for me.  I can't reiterate that enough, alongside the use of such a  small space -it's TV magic!

Sweety Nuff - My second favourite shop on this new set. This particular set is accessible and open (just like Prima Doner on Victoria Street), and we sat outside it for a photo opportunity. Also worth mentioning here is ‘Claude’ the ice cream-loving french bulldog (left-hand side of the shop entrance) who was specially commissioned and made just for the show! Again, the sweet treats in the window do look real, but they are not. 

 

Bargainanza Pawnbrokers (r/h side of the charity shop)

Do you remember Barlow’s Buys from a few years ago? Maybe Tracy could have a hand in this new shop? I'm guessing Daisy’s stolen engagement ring will turn up here? This particular shop seems to be a facade, but, the charity shop, and Sweety Nuff, are accessible so I guess we will have a few exciting camera shots to look forward to and maybe a few new sets on the show. I think this shop is just a facade too, but don't quote me on that! You can also see the lighting here, which I sure will help with night shoots!

Gregory Pope Foundation Charity Shop  - This is a wonderful-looking addition to the show, and as someone who regularly frequents charity shops, I can tell you that this is my favourite and it looks very realistic. We very nearly hit the Corrie fourth wall at one point, as I spotted a novel by Jonathan Harvey, on the book stand outside. 

As we know, Jonathan is a writer for the show! A deliberate set design joke, or not, I found that very funny. Let's keep an eye out to see if we can spot it on the show! Corrie did tell us that Evelyn and Roy shall be volunteering here, so I would guess this is the shop that makes its screen debut first. 

I did have a sneaky look into the charity shop window around the front shop entrance, and it also has a conveniently placed ginnel and side window to the set, which you can see here ;

I can easily envisage some new Corrie idents using that side window. You read it here first! Also, we've a new ginnel! Is it for moody crime shots or something more light-hearted? Sticking my head around the ginnel corner, to the right of this set, I saw a door to Trim Up North, which is obviously around the other side of the building. 

As I say, the use of space is unbelievable, and just like the filming outside the studio's main entrance (to depict the prison entrance), this new set will be undoubtedly used for several different scenes/as a set double/and will save on those locations' shoots. I'm guessing this will be an addition to the Corrie Tour in the not-too-distant future, so you can see for yourselves, but the attention to detail can't be praised highly enough! Once built, the Corrie team aged and weathered the set to make it look like it's been there since the 1960s. As someone who lives on a working-class council estate, I can tell you that the effect is realistic alright!-it looks grim. 

This leads me to the space in front of the shops themselves, which is a new children's playground. 

THE CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUND 

I think Corrie has been missing one of these for a few years, maybe it’s an after-thought from Victoria Gardens / Seb’s memorial, who knows, but it's a worthwhile addition. I sat on one of the swings (out of shot here) and then noticed these bins; 

Again, I point you to the incredible attention to detail depicting Weatherfield council’s coat of arms. One of these bins even had a bit of graffiti on it! Colson Smith (Craig Tinker) told us that the production team sprayed the tarmac with water, just to see where puddles would land. I guess this is a visual thing, and I found that fascinating. You can read that interview here

COMMUNITY RECYCLING CENTRE

As a motif of Corrie's (latter-day) set design, we do have a few new murals on this set too (you can see one on the playground), and in keeping with Craig’s ‘Maddie’ design, its colourful graffiti is depicted in a similar style. Corrie PR told us that the community recycling centre is being used to promote recycling on-screen and this was painted using leftover paint from previous sets! I imagine the recycle bins will be used by environmentally conscious residents such as Spider, Toyah, and Sally, and maybe Stephen Ried will have a new place to brood or murder!

WEATHERFIELD COMMUNITY HUB 

This set appears to be just a standing facade, and possibly a fictional extension of the Victoria Street community centre. Either way, it works as a modern set-piece addition to the show and could add another local venue for Mary’s am-dram plays, or Griff’s right-wing ramblings? 

Our visit to Weatherfield Precinct marked the set's official opening and no filming had taken place! We were told that filming would commence the following week, which leads us to its on-screen debut later this month.

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Viewing the new set, meeting some more cast, and AAA on the Coronation Street studio lot itself! December 1st 2022 was a Corrie trip that will forever be seared in my memory. One of the first fans EVER to be on that set. Thanks again to our wonderful editor Glenda (praise be!!), my co-blogger on this trip, Sophie Williams, and the brilliant Coronation Street Press Team. 

We've got a lot to look forward to going into 2023 and I'm sure (Corrie creator) Tony Warren, would have loved this extension to the wider Weatherfield world. 

I’ll be sure to add a few more pictures to Twitter soon, so keep following me @rybaxoxo and Corrie blog for all your latest Coronation Street developments. 

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The History of Weatherfield's Police Stations

With Coronation Street about to get it's own police station, we're going to take a short look back at the Street's most recent Cop Shops. The oldest one I can find is the 'Weatherfield Central Police' Station.

In real life, this one was located on the Quay Street set, nearby to the fake Rovers Return that was used in the old tours. The Central Police Station was actually an entrance to the Granada building.

When the set moved, we never saw this version again, which explains why they soon began planning to build the new area of the set. But in the meantime Coronation Street was in need of a police station, and they used more than one location for it, unfortunately, I was unable to find out where these the first station was filmed, but thanks to fellow blogger Michael Adams, who pointed out where the second station is located. The second station is actually the former Plant Hill station in Blackley and was used as recently as tonight's episode.

From next month we will begin to see the new Police Station on screen, as it seems the set includes another station right next door to it, it seems likely that this will be an older part of the police station, rather than a separate one all together. It seems that in the context of the show itself, this station will actually be further away from the Street, as there is a gate that hides it away from Victoria Street.

 This will be Coronation Street's first purpose built Police Station set,it will be interesting to see what they will be using it for, I hope we see Craig Tinker become a full-time policeman, and maybe get to know a few of his colleagues. I imagine we'll also see a few of the street's residents spending a night in the cells.

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The New Map of Coronation Street

Click to enlarge

With yesterday's news about Victoria Street being extended, I noticed a lot of confusion on Twitter, with people wondering where exactly this new area slots in to the current set.

So I decided I would create a full map of Weatherfield as it exists in 2018, It isn't a perfect map, the scale of a few things is a little off, but it should help those people confused about where Victoria Street is.

I posted this on Twitter last night, and thanks to a few replies I added a few corrections, such as adding Speed Daal, and the placement of the Snooker Hall and Tattoo Parlour.

If anyone has any suggestions for improvements, send me a Tweet @WeatherfieldRec on Twitter!

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Trammelled

Coronation Street and Metrolink have a complicated relationship.  This is perhaps to be expected given that the show once used a tram to try and dent Rita's wig.  The two Manchester icons nudge up against one another, occasionally butting into each other's business, sometimes working together to celebrate.

The earliest Metrolink intervention came in 2005.  Mousy mum Claire Peacock revealed that she had long dreamed of driving a tram, and even applied for the job, but it didn't go any further.  The reason for this was GMPTE's objection when they discovered that the plan was for Claire to drive a tram right off the viaduct and into the Street.  They were understandably less than thrilled that the show was portraying their network in an unfavourable light, and the whole storyline was dropped.

It was another five years before the tram finally made its way off the viaduct, this time with Metrolink's assistance.  Look closely, however, and you'll see their subtle influence over the plot and the filming.  The tram crash is not the fault of the driver; instead, it's the explosion at the bistro that causes a hole in the track, and he does his best to try and bring it to a safe halt.  They also used a T-68 tram (numbered 1030 - a number never used in real life), a model at that point being phased out across the network in favour of the M5000s; the implication is that this sort of thing might happen to the old trams, but not the new ones.  Finally, though the yellow and grey livery looks an awful lot like Metrolink's, tiny writing on the side identifies it as part of the "Politanlink" network.

The negotiations between ITV and the local tram provider must have exhausted the producers.  A few months later, Izzy, Sean and Julie took the tram into town, except now it was a different network entirely.  Instead it was an orange "City Tram", calling at a very 1970s "Manchester East" stop that looked more like something from the abandoned Picc-Vic scheme.  It was a surprisingly permanent looking set, and made a couple more appearances before disappearing.

But it wasn't always Metrolink making the demands.  In 2014, they began consultations on a much-needed new tram line to the Trafford Centre, the second largest shopping mall in the UK.  The route passed along Trafford Wharf Road, right outside ITV's studio complex, and the broadcaster immediately objected on the grounds that the noise of the trams might interfere with filming.  Their objections were overruled, and the line is under construction right now, with a provisional opening date of 2020.

This slightly fractious relationship may be why the new Weatherfield North tram stop, unveiled yesterday, isn't quite right.  Nice try and everything, but it's just a bit off, and it makes you wonder if there was a breakdown in communication between the designers and TfGM.  Perhaps there was a licensing issue; perhaps there was a question over corporate logos and liveries.  But when it's sitting next to a lovingly recreated Costa and an incredibly accurate Co-op it's hard not to notice what's wrong.

Let's start with that station building.  It's been designed to look like a former heavy rail station, which is fair enough.  Metrolink has taken over railway services right from the start; the Bury-Altrincham line which formed its first incarnation was a heavy rail line converted to trams.  In the majority of cases, though, the expensive-to-maintain station buildings were done away with.  Heaton Park, for example, retains the platform canopies and stairways from its railway days, but at the road level there's a large open patch of land where the ticket office used to be.  Some historic buildings were kept, but devoted to new uses.  Sale, for example, is now a newsagent, while the building at Trafford Bar is up for redevelopment.  The actual tram business lurks behind, entirely separate.

Weatherfield North is a station.  They've built a railway station and called it a tram stop.  The font used for the sign is Metrolink-esque, yes, but the signs for the Ticket windows use something more like Railway Alphabet.  Oh yes - there's ticket windows.  Which is completely inaccurate.  There are no manned Metrolink stops.  Tickets are dispensed by machines; the only time you can buy one from a human is where the tram line is shared with National Rail premises (and sometimes not even then - hello Navigation Road).  Note that the ticket offices come equipped with contactless card machines, so these have been planned for practical use within the show.

And on top of that - why would you build a station where the two members of staff are separated by a pedestrian entrance?  I love symmetry as much as the next OCD nerd, but that's an incredibly impractical building.  If Frank in ticket office one wants to talk to Sheila in ticket office two he has to lean out the window and shout at her.  If this were accurate, one of those offices would be a butty bar, and the other would be a cab office to rival StreetCars.  There would be a ticket machine just inside the doorway and that would be the beginning and end of the facilities - or, even more likely, a lift and a set of steps and no station building at all.

The colours aren't right either.  Blue?  For a Metrolink stop?  They are always, always yellow and grey; they're almost as obsessive about it as Merseyrail.  Any ironwork or canopy gets a slap of the corporate colours, making it immediately obvious that there's a tram stop there.  The blue and white is just plain wrong.  It's not even the teal of the old Metrolink livery.  It looks like they've tried to do a tram stop without Metrolink's input - note there's a lack of a Metrolink flag, too.  This is disappointing.  EastEnders has had a Walford East station on its set for decades, and it looks fantastic.  Weatherfield North... doesn't.

This might be overthinking; it might be personal bias.  I've been spending months visiting every Metrolink tram stop, plus years before that visiting every railway station in the north, so I'm pretty familiar with the architectural features and design of Manchester's transport network.  I looked at the photo of Weatherfield North and I was disappointed.  It isn't right.  I accept, for millions of Corrie viewers, it doesn't matter; they won't even notice.  It's just that the Weatherfield of Coronation Street has always been proud to be part of Manchester, and the Metrolink is a Manchester legend.  They should treat it with respect.

Let's finish with something a bit more fun; a look at the geography of the tram stop.  Many thanks to regular blog contributor David Chew for this map of the new set.

It seems there are in fact two separate tram routes (in blue) running parallel to one another; the one at the top of Coronation Street itself, and this new route with the tram stop on it.  The alternative is that the trams do a huge loop round the back of Mawdsley Street, which seems unlikely.  Presumably there's a junction further along where the lines merge, which helps us to place Weatherfield North on the Metrolink map.  Weatherfield has long been analogous to Salford, so it would seem to be somewhere around Pomona and Cornbrook.  Perhaps Weatherfield North is on a branch heading off at Cornbrook towards the new developments at Salford, I mean, Weatherfield Quays, while the Coronation Street line is the route to Pomona?  In real life that'd put Coronation Street in the middle of a dock, but I'm clutching at straws here.

It's good that we finally know where Deirdre Barlow was getting the tram to work from after all these years.  It's just a shame that the stop isn't as well designed as the pool hall or the estate agents.  Maybe we can have another crash to knock it down and rebuild it.

It's occurred to me that the creation of Weatherfield North means that I'll never feel like I've truly visited every Metrolink stop, even though I've spent the best part of a year doing it over at www.merseytart.com.  Commiserate with me on Twitter @merseytart. 

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