Coronation Street sets
The sets of the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street have undergone four major and several less significant changes since the first broadcast in December 1960.
The other side of the street consists of a factory, two shop units, a garage and three semi-detached houses, all appearing to have been constructed in the late 1980s.
There are a number of reasons for the use of an indoor studio; the main one being that the infancy of production techniques at the time did not allow easy recording and editing of sequences filmed in different locations.
[2] It was not until 1967 that editing techniques had improved enough to allow Coronation Street to be filmed on separate interior and exterior sets.
These include the collapse of number 7 in 1965, and two years later, a special effects-laden storyline involving a train crash; the viewers did not know if stalwart Ena Sharples was dead under the rubble.
This new set was built on some old railway sidings near Granada Studios, and coincided with a storyline of the demolition of Elliston's raincoat factory and the Mission Hall, and the subsequent building of maisonettes opposite the terrace.
[4] Coronation Street's 1968 set was initially not all that different from the interior version previously used, with the wooden facades that had been used in the studio simply being erected on the new site.
[1] The first exterior set was referred to as "the coldest place on earth"[3] by actors and crew since they disliked working on it due to a near-constant wind which blew directly down the street.
The site of New York Street set has been used again in Coronation Street, notably for Davenports (the firm Sally Webster worked for when she embarked on an affair with her boss, Ian Davenport); the strip club where Lloyd Mullaney met Cheryl Gray and also as the location for Weatherfield's tram stop where Izzy Armstrong was mugged in 2011.
In 2012, the site featured as the location of a casino and another strip club in which the character Kylie Platt (née Granger) was working.
The barge owned by Martha, who had an affair with Ken Barlow in 2009 was also a set for tourists to see during their Coronation Street visit.
The building interiors were used as offices for writers and as stores for props used in outdoor shooting, aside from the takeaway, butcher shop and Barlow's Buys, which were built so that filming could be done inside them.
The storyline for December 2010 (Coronation Street's 50th anniversary) showed the viaduct collapse, sending the tram onto the cobbles, demolishing the Kabin and the corner shop in the process.
On 20 December 2013, the final scenes were filmed at Quay Street, and the set re-opened on 5 April 2014, when it became a tourist attraction.
Furthermore, for the first time in the show's history, The Rovers Return has a partial interior to allow camera shots looking into the exit to the rear yard and smoking area.
For the stunt which saw Tyrone fall through the ceiling from the attic (after Todd Grimshaw ordered 12mm chipboard instead of 14mm and blackmailed Gary Windass to use it, therefore failing to meet building regulations) the interior set was constructed over a period of four weeks and housed inside the empty shell of Roy's Rolls.
A behind the scenes video was uploaded after the first installment of the bank holiday episodes aired to the website of Coronation Street.
The extended set features a garden, and a memorial bench paying tribute to the Manchester Arena bombing 22 victims, including Coronation Street super fan Martyn Hett.
New additions to the set include a precinct with facades of a Greater Manchester Police station, a tram stop named Weatherfield North which is part of a product placement deal with Metrolink, and shopfront facades of Costa Coffee and a Weatherfield-branded Co-op Food supermarket which appeared onscreen from 20 April 2018.
[21] On 20 April 2018, ITV announced that it had successfully been granted planning permission to allow booked public visits to the MediaCityUK Trafford Wharf set.
The development of Stage One was as a result of the policy of then-producers David Liddiment and Mervyn Watson to update the show's production techniques.
The resultant need for additional studio capacity meant the opening of Stage Two, located next to The Bonded Warehouse on the Granada site in what used to be the Baker Street building.
It is not the first time such errors have occurred: in one episode where Alan Bradley attacked Rita Fairclough, viewers could see a studio light in what should be No.
Whereas The Rovers Return was previously an empty shell on the backlot at Granada Studios a partial interior has been constructed within the new pub at the drama serial's new home over at Trafford Wharf.
This was shown on screen by actor Simon Gregson (who plays Steve McDonald) during the ITV programme "Coronation Street: A Moving Story", documenting the two-year process of constructing the new set build.
There is an Archie Street in Salford today, but not on the site of the original – which stood near St Clement's Church, Ordsall.
The maisonettes were demolished in 1971 after a structural fault was identified following a fire and were replaced by the Mark Brittain warehouse and a new community centre.
