Is Coronation Street a realistic or dated portrayal?

[regentroad5]

No Henry,but I would be interested to hear about it.I was very young when I started going in the pubs near the docks;The Salisbury,The Ship and the notorious Clowes.Being so young,along with my mates,I felt a bit of an interloper being in such pubs which seemed full of tough,strong,worldly people so me and my mates kept ourselves to ourselves,not wishing to rub anybody up the wrong way.But I still remember the rich array of humanity you used to find in those places at that time.

[Henry Mantell]

I'm not making this one up I assure you. My father was employed at Laverty and Co. a religious wholesalers with premises adjacent to the abbattoir not far from Salford RC Cathedral. The Catholic Mission to Seamen (Stella maris)in Oldfield Road was situated not far away. My father was involved with the Mission to Seamen on a regular basis and Laverty's a Catholic family run business were major donors to the mission which had modern, hostel, social centre and chapel on the premises. I recall dad worked with someone called Bernard Murphy at Stella Maris. They were both altar servers, my father had been a member of the Guild since the 1930's.
My father heard in disbelief from a number of seamen of "The Sweaty Sock" and thought it was a leg pull until the RC Chaplain told him of the reality!
I am not sure where on the Docks it was situated but it was run by an ex-boxer, had no female bar staff, fixed seating and plenty of fights!
Some years later our next door neighbour a Glaswegian merchant Seaman who sailed with Manchester liners from the Docks or Liverpool was asked about the place. He said it was "an old time sailor's place", popular amongst Scots/Irish seaman and was all too real! He said Women weren't allowed, apparently because there were well known pick up places elsewhere around the Docks and partly for safety! Since he was a seaman from age 14 and had been a boxer in his youth and "wouldn't go near it" I leave the rest to your imagination! Tommy liked to drink and was very knowledgeable about watering holes the world over so I think that is safe to say it existed!
I think it had a reputable licensed name but to seamen from all over the world it was known as "The Sweaty Sock".
If anyone knows any more about it do post!

[Rocles]

I think in the '60s, Corry did a fair job of dramatisiation of a generic Salford street....but also was very typical of Manchester streets too. Granted, the artistic license was pushed way beyond normality with all the murders/viaduct collapses etc, but the scenery itself was very typical of streets that lasted way into the 1990's in some areas (and indeed still exist today!).

One such street is Macfarren St in Longsight. My gran and grandad lived nearly their whole lives there, my Dad grew up there, and right up to my gran's death at age 95 in 1985, she still had only an outside toilet in the yard, and a tin bath!! She refused modernisation because of the upheaval in her little "palace", which was always kept immaculately clean inside and out. Here's a picture of that street I took in 1999, note, as per Corry, railway running across the top, and grocer's shop on the corner...apart from the cars, it could be 1930

[aidanorourke]

A good friend of mine, 'DAT' who I've lost contact with, grew up on... ah, what was the name of the street, I 've forgotten! It ran down by the east side of the railway line from Stanley Grove Longsight. It was a typical cobbled street of tiny houses, with a toilet in the back yard. I used to call in to see him after we had taken the bus - one of those Mancunian 53 buses - from Xaverian College. He would play me his latest T-Rex and David Bowie records and we'd chat about Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. Later they moved to a new 70's style council house on Blakedown Walk, near Daisy Mill, and that whole street and the houses were removed, to become a grassy space. I seem to remember DA's dad with his grandfather shirt sitting on the armchair, and his mum cooking in the tiny kitchen. It was like the 1930s.

[Phil Blinkhorn]

Some street names on the east side of the railway off Stanley Grove as far as Northmoor Rd and Kirkmanshulme Lane:

Victoria St, Dalby St, Longbridge St, Chipping St, Link St, Mitton St.

I remember having a summer job in 1964 working for Redman's Grocers who had their head office close by Reddish South station.

Redman's had some very classy shops and market stalls all around Manchester, they had also a "low rent" division, Vernon's, which had some medium size supermarkets and many self service corner shops.

I got the job by applying at Vernon's on Stockport Rd, opposite Cromwell Grove Levenshulme, on the corner of Farmside Place.

During the summer I was moved around and travelled by bike and bus. From the Redman's shop on Piccadilly I watched them finish Rodwell Tower which then lay empty for years but my most abiding memory ofthe summer is of just how much of Manchester was composed of terraces of dark red brich houses, corner shops and pubs, all with dark slate roofs, backyards and almost every one with a front door opening straight onto the street.

[Henry Mantell]

Originally Posted by Henry Mantell

My father was employed at Laverty and Co. a religious wholesalers with premises adjacent to the abbattoir not far from Salford RC Cathedral. The Catholic Mission to Seamen (Stella maris)in Oldfield Road was situated not far away. My father was involved with the Mission to Seamen on a regular basis and Laverty's a Catholic family run business were major donors to the mission which had modern, hostel, social centre and chapel on the premises. I recall dad worked with someone called Bernard Murphy at Stella Maris. They were both altar servers, my father had been a member of the Guild since the 1930's.

Following this post I learned that Bernard had become Mayor of Salford. Sadly Councillor Bernard Murphy passed away, there is a condolence book on the MEN Online site for anyone who knew him and wishes to contribute.
It seems Bernard spent a lifetime in the service of others, certainly my teenage experience of him in the 1960's wasn't unique.

[patfowles]

I'm with you Aidan, I love cobbles.

[a.l.rickards]

My mother was born in Coronation street in 1909. The real street was still there in 1985 land locked by a block of flats. When I saw it, it was not quite the same as the studio portrayal: of course.
It would be interesting to hear from anyone else with family connections around that time. After Coronation street the family moved to Oldfield Road. They would have been well known as, according to my mother and her sisters, their mother had a shop and made ice cream. Their father, my grandfather, was well known. There were girlhood memories of 'clattering across the Mark Addy bridge'.

[selmer50]

I know this may be nit-picking but cobbles are round stones, as found on the beach. They were set in the surface of a road to provide a hard wearing surface from the Romans onwards. The streets everyone now describe as 'cobbled' are actually granite 'sets'. These are brick shaped oblongs of granite placed vertically in the road so that the visible square end provides the road surface.



I used to work for a road surfacing company and sometimes these 'sets' were removed before tarmac-ing the road but often they were left in place and the tarmac was laid over the top.
Re the 'Red Rec'; as a boy in Salford, the only play area known to me as the Red Rec was the one on Liverpool Street between Fitzwarren Street and Cross Lane. I was always told that the red stone surface was crushed bricks, this being a way to make use of the broken bricks from post-war rebuilding / development (also used on tennis courts). This play area is still there, albeit it now has a tarmac surface.
As a young girl, my wife lived in Claremont Street, Ordsall and regularly saw Coronation Street 'outside' scenes being filmed around that area. She also saw a couple of 'Street' weddings filmed at St. Clements church.

[aidanorourke]

Yes, it is an important distinction and I am also guilty of referring to setts as cobbles - by the way I think it's a double t. There's no listing in the online dictionary, but try doing a search for setts to verify.

There are still many streets in and around Manchester where the... setts... are still visible. Quite a few residential streets in Stockport have been left untouched.

They help preserve the original character of the street and can also can have a mildly traffic calming effect. I like them but... they have some disadvantages, as pointed out by Phil

These setts are on High Street in Manchester's Northern Quarter don't seem to cause any problems!