Nellie Corbishley

Jim Corbishley was the first landlady of The Rover's Return.

The Corbishleys - 43-year-old Jim, Nellie and their son Charlie - opened the Rover's doors for the first time in August 1902. Before that, Jim ran a grocer's shop which he sold for £40.

Jim drank heavily and sometimes hit Nellie when drunk, but Nellie could handle herself; when barmaid Janey Atkinson announced she was pregnant with Charlie's baby, Nellie could see that she was more than two months pregnant and realised she was trying to trap Charlie into marriage. Nellie had a few words with Janey and then told Charlie that the girl had decided to visit her mother "to think things out". Nellie also changed bar policy by letting women into the Public during the war.

In 1916, Nellie and Jim were shocked to discover that Nellie's bouts of sickness were caused by a sustained campaign by barmaid Sarah Bridges to poison her with arsenic. That same year, they received news that Charlie had been killed in the war. When the war ended, and the heroes returned home, the reality of Charlie's death hit Nellie and Jim gave up the tenancy of the Rover's so that he and Nellie could start afresh in Little Hayfield.


 * ''Nellie first appeared in Daran Little and Bill Hill's "Weatherfield Life", published in 1992. Other information is derived from Little's follow-up book, "Around the Coronation Street Houses".