Coronation Street's new set unveiled

BBC NEWS,

Avid Coronation Street fans may notice subtle changes to the famous street when the soap moves to a new set next spring after producers tweaked parts to "equip us for a bright future".

The show will move to its new home on Salford Quays, Manchester, in January.

Builders have spent two-and-a-half years recreating the terraced street.

The houses are bigger and the road has been widened to allow two cars to pass, while the Rovers Return now has two upstairs windows instead of just one.

"We've added an extra window here and there, which makes the buildings a little bit more realistic in terms of the huge clans that are living inside the houses," said executive producer Kieran Roberts.

"We've done hundreds and hundreds of things like that. We want to make sure this is the Coronation Street that our many millions of fans know and love.

"But we want to make sure this will equip us for a very bright future."

The scale of the street is bigger to accommodate the demands of high definition TV, while lamp-posts have been moved back on the pavements and kerbs have been lowered to allow for easier filming.

While some small details have changed, producers have painstakingly attempted to faithfully recreate most of the street.

The crew faced some obstacles when trying to replicate it exactly, however.

Puddles 'too deep'

Head of production design Alan Davis said the first bay window was built to the wrong proportions. "But we were too far down the line to change the foundations or anything like that," he said.

And following the press launch on Friday, part of the cobbled road will be dug up and re-laid because the puddles have been found to be too deep compared with the current on-screen street.

"We need them less defined," Mr Davis said. "That's going to be something that's tweaked before we start [filming]."

The terraced houses have been built with 144,000 reclaimed bricks from house demolitions in Salford. "It was a tricky process because of the pressure of trying to match as best you can, almost brick for brick," said Paul Sutton of Lancashire Brick & Tile.

And the type of bricks originally used to build the more modern houses on the other side of the road have since been discontinued, Mr Sutton said.

"We had to get the factory manager to come across and remind himself of what was done 15 years ago and get these purpose made for this street," he said.

A total of 54,000 cobbles have been used, many found from canalside developments in Salford and Eccles.

The new set is two miles from the show's current home in the Granada Studios complex on Quay Street in central Manchester. The Granada site was recently sold for redevelopment.

Actress Jane Danson, who plays Leanne Tilsley, told BBC Breakfast: "We were obviously very sad to leave Quay Street because that's our home but this is a lot bigger [with] more space to film in and we're all very excited because it means we can do more shots.

"We can have two cars going down the street, which we couldn't before. The street's a lot longer, so it's moving with the times and moving with new technology."

Once the show moves, ITV is planning to open the old set, which has been used since 1982, as a visitor attraction for at least six months.