Railway yard

Bonded Warehouse

The five-storey Grape Street bonded warehouse is a former HM Customs warehouse built on the site of a pig station between 1867 and 1869, replacing one of two cotton warehouses that had burnt down in 1866. The new warehouse was known as the Charles Street warehouse until the street was renamed Grape Street in the 1890s. This renaming is believed to reflect the number of carpenters shops and timber yards located in the area during this period (‘grape’ being a type of wood), despite some sources suggesting that the street was in a red-light district where it was originally known as ‘Grope Street’.

^{The Grape Street bonded warehouse prior to development ©ITV}

The building was acquired by Granada in 1981 following its closure as a warehouse in 1975 and it was converted into studios, associated facilities, and offices in 1982.

The basement and ground levels were adapted for parts of the Granada Studios Tour in 1988 and a pedestrian subway (pictured below) was added to link the building to the studio workshop, thus connecting it to the rest of the site.

The subway dips, becoming deeper as it passes under Grape Street, possibly to make way for the 1850s sewer running along this street:

The basement level of the warehouse featured the ‘Backstage Tour’, including various sets, the ‘Stairway to the Stars’ attraction which would ascend to a fake Hollywood skyline, and a simulated television centre featuring interconnected studios and a gallery, a props room and edit suite, and make-up/wardrobe & costume rooms.

This area was linked via what was essentially a tunnel from Arch 1 (the Backstage Tour entrance; used pre-Granada as a gas repair workshop), forming part of a c.1870 railway viaduct containing Grade II-listed colonnaded railway arches.

The arches contained other attractions such as The Sooty Show theatre and shop, Futurevision (a 21st century technology showcase which stretched upstairs into the Starlight Theatre above) and food/merchandise retailers.

These units fronted onto a New York street set and façade built on the site of the original outdoor Coronation Street set in the former railway goods yard to the west of the Bonded Warehouse.

HARDCORE FACT #1: The area where the New York street set was built was initially considered for real housing after the Coronation Street set moved to the other side of the Bonded Warehouse in 1982. The arches here were later dressed as Corrie’s ‘Weatherfield Precinct’.

HARDCORE FACT #2: In April 1991, Castlefield Properties Limited – a Granada subsidiary who owned the TV Centre land and leased the former railway parts from the British Railways Board – applied to the Secretary of State for Transport to build and operate a light railway along the existing bridge running from the on-site arches to the opposite side of the River Irwell. Authority was granted under the Manchester, Liverpool Road (Castlefield Properties Limited) Light Railway Order in September 1993, but the railway never opened.

Somewhat bizarrely, there was also a rollercoaster (Skytrak) running outside and along Grape Street, which was the world’s first and only solocoaster. Despite a £1 million investment, the ride lasted for just a year before the Granada Studios Tour closed at the end of 1999. More on this in Expedition Theme Park’s fantastic video.

According to www.ukrides.info:

“[Skytrak] was … plagued with problems. One car derailed during tests, and the brakes were too sharp, the first rider was the construction engineer, he suffered a compressed spine and was hospitalised.” G-Force Magazine adds: “The ride … would often open for just an hour before closing for the rest of the day. Sometimes it wouldn’t open at all. It wasn’t uncommon for the ‘Flight-Pods’ to come to a halt before completing the short course, this led to several rescues by the local fire brigade.”

At ground level, the Bonded Warehouse contained Russell Grant’s Astrology World, the Giant’s Room from The Return of the Antelope which was full of mammoth furniture to make you feel physically tiny, a doll’s house which did the opposite, a chromakey (blue screen) room, and a Downing Street set, amongst other attractions. The life of the Downing Street attraction is shown below:

The UFO Zone monorail – featuring a recorded video from Sir Trevor McDonald of all people – was located on the floor above, accessible via a ramp on Grape Street (Grape Street had been made a private street in 1981).

Also along Grape Street was the shop exterior set used for the filming of Sooty & Co. until around 1994 when it was moved to a real shop at 28 Whittaker Lane in Prestwich. The set was subsequently redressed as a ‘Chinese laundry’ for Freddie Starr before being removed. This would have allowed Granada to develop this side of the Bonded Warehouse without any disruption to filming.

Other parts of the Bonded Warehouse included:
– a small brick office attached to the western elevation of the building (once an artiste green room; later an ice cream parlour on the Granada Studios Tour)
– a detached building opposite the north side, known as the ‘Telestars’ booth where visitors could star in their own green screen Coronation Street video
– a small service road to the south of the building, marked ‘the rat run’ on this map, where visitors could see the set of The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders on their way to Coronation Street (if they opted not to ride on a tram).

The mid-2000s saw an £18 million proposal for the relocation of ITV Granada’s operations from the main TV Centre buildings to the Bonded Warehouse. While these plans never officially went ahead, the middle floor of the warehouse was used as additional office space (reportedly vacated in 2007), with the upper two floors occasionally used for filming and possibly other ad-hoc purposes.

Today, the Bonded Warehouse is a co-working space with creative studios.

Subterranean areas:

The Stables

Two stable blocks containing stables, stalls and harnessing rooms for working horses were built alongside the Bonded Warehouse between 1891 and 1908.

During 1968, the buildings were converted from a timber yard into a theatre and bar for Granada’s experimental Stables Theatre Company. This theatre/television cross-platform project was launched in January 1969 by the Tiller Girls and Manchester City FC players, but ceased soon after at the end of 1970 following the withdrawal of Granada’s support.

Despite best endeavours by an independent trust to continue as the Stables Theatre Club, the space fell into disuse but was later used by Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama as the Manchester Drama Club.

HARDCORE FACT: While The Stables Bar was a popular watering hole amongst staff, others nearby included the Pineapple Inn, The Baulking Donkey, the New Theatre Hotel, the Brown Bull in Salford, The Old Grapes (run by Coronation Street’s Liz Dawn) and the Film Exchange on Quay Street, a strategically-positioned member’s club that enabled Granada staff to sneak to and from work without being seen by the “upper floors” of the TV Centre – a walk that became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In 1981, the old railway marshalling yard to the east of The Stables was transformed into the Gdańsk Shipyard in Poland for Strike: The Birth of Solidarity, a docu-drama starring Zoë Wanamaker, before being cleared for construction of a brand new Coronation Street set.

^{_{Before: Strike: The Birth of Solidarity set ©ITV After: Coronation Street set, courtesy ex-employee}}

Like the Bonded Warehouse, The Stables were adapted for parts of the Granada Studios Tour in 1988. For this, part of the single-storey stable block was converted into a replica of Coronation Street‘s Rovers Return pub and the lower level of the two-storey block was converted into a replica of Emmerdale‘s Woolpack pub, which became a Coronation Street crew room in later years.

^{_{Left: Replica Rovers in 2018 | Right: Replica Rovers bar for sale in 2019 ©Cheshire Demolition}}

Between the two blocks was a modern ‘conservatory’ which housed a carvery restaurant and later formed Coronation Street’s prison set and police façade.

The upper block of the two became the Coronation Street Experience; later being transformed into Corrie’s doctor’s/hospital set in 1999/2000. Incidentally, the south side of this same block also became a set for the builders’ yard in 2003 – reflecting the site’s former real-life use as a timber yard.

A plan of The Stables, in the context of Coronation Street sets, is shown below (click to view the full image):