Larry Buck

Larry Buck and his family inhabited 9 Coronation Street from 1910 to 1926.

Parents Ned and Sarah and children Larry, Joe and Alice, lived in a one-room tenement in Inkerman Street before moving to Coronation Street. All of them worked at Hardcastle's Mill.

Larry was a quiet but good-looking lad. His heart didn't lie with his work but he was responsible; during the 1911 factory strike, he went on a walking holiday in the Pennines instead of joining his neighbours, but he returned to work as soon as the strike was over as he knew the family needed his wages.

Larry returned from the war feeling restless and became a boxer, causing his parents much distress. He quit when a punch to the nose gave him a slight brain damage, causing his speech to be permanently slurred, but when his mother died from alcohol poisoning around the same time, Ned held Larry responsible, accusing him of making his mother turn to drink.

In 1920, Larry married mill drawer Avis Grundy and they took over No.9's master bedroom. They had twins Lucy and Ian Buck in 1923 but the babies were often left alone while Avis worked and Larry drank. Before their first birthday, a fire started at No.9 which only Ian survived. Larry swore never to touch alcohol again but his abstinence didn't last long. In 1925, Larry was arguing with Ned over who won the 1921 Derby when Larry knocked Ned across a table, smashing his head on the floor and killing him instantly. The death was ruled as misadventure but Larry still felt responsible and decided to leave Weatherfield. Taking a job at a tailoring factory in Newcastle, the Bucks moved east, where they had two more children - Joseph and Alice. He lived until 1948 when he was killed in an industrial accident.


 * Larry 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".