Front end of Number 13
13 Coronation Street is the address of the rightmost house on the terraced side of Coronation Street, next door to the Corner Shop. In the past it has been lived in by the Ogden and Webster families, and is currently owned by Ashley and Claire Peacock, who are downsizing to raise capital. It has a reputation in the Street of bringing back luck to its residents.
Description
Number 13 has two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room and a small front room. It also has an outside toilet in the yard and loft space shared with its neighbours.
History
Number 13 was built with the rest of the odd side of Coronation Street in 1902.
The Hardmans
May Hardman complains to Christine
The house was the longtime home of the Hardman family, George and May Hardman and their daughter Christine. In 1955, after spending two years living in the middle-class Oakhill area earning a comfortable income from George's grocery shop, May was widowed, and the house and shop were sold to pay off creditors. May and Christine had to move back to Coronation Street. Christine, now 16 and able to work, handled the transition better than May, who was ashamed about having to return to Number 13 after experiencing a better life, and couldn't get over her losses. Eventually she had a breakdown in the street, and had a spell in a mental hospital.
In 1960, May died from a brain tumour in the hallway of the house as she tried to summon help by banging on the wall to the Corner Shop next door. The landlord Edward Wormold let Christine go on living in the house but increased the rent. Christine worked at Elliston's Raincoat Factory and struggled to make ends meet. A romance with plumber Joe Makinson started when he paid a bill for Christine when she couldn't pay it.
In 1961, a slate fell off Number 13's roof and hit Minnie Caldwell on the head. The kindly neighbour was encouraged to sue Christine by friend Ena Sharples, but Minnie decided not to. Growing weary of her boring life, Christine considered throwing herself off the roof of the factory, but was talked out of it by Ken Barlow, and afterwards decided to seize life, and left her job and her house to live in London with new boyfriend Colin Appleby.
The Booths
The house remained empty until Wormold sold it to Jerry Booth for £525 in 1963. Jerry's girlfriend Myra Dickinson was pushing him into marriage and it was she who wanted the house. Though they were initially happy, Jerry became concerned over Myra's compulsive spending on hire purchase, and that she hadn't been paying the mortgage. Overwhelmed by bills, the now-expecting Booths had their electricity cut off. Myra's father George Dickinson offered to pay the Booths' debts if they moved in with him, and with the loss of Jerry's job at the builder's yard because of employer Len Fairclough's legal trouble, Jerry gave in and the Booths left Number 13 and their troubles behind, selling the house back to Wormold.
The Ogdens
Stan Ogden agrees on a price with Wormold
The Ogden family moved into Number 13 in July 1964 when Stan Ogden tracked down his errant daughter Irma, who had run away from home after one of Stan's frequent drunken rages. Stan swore he was turning over a new leaf and bought Number 13 from Wormold for £550 as a sign that he was sincere and was looking out for his family. With him came his wife Hilda and children Irma and Trevor. Their other two children, Tony and Sylvia Ogden, had been taken into council care because of Stan's violence.
The Ogdens had an old-fashioned marriage - Hilda took on a job as a cleaner at the Rovers Return and made looking after Stan her life, always putting him and his needs first, rarely complaining about it and always defending him when Irma called him a layabout.
Trevor didn't live with the family for long. He stole money from Len and ran away to London, leaving a note asking his parents to disown him. He wasn't heard from again for years.
Stan was never steadily employed, drifting from job to job. Through the 1960s he was briefly a milkman, a coalman, an ice-cream salesman, a chauffeur, a street photographer, a professional wrestler and an artist, unskilled professions Stan enjoyed as long as he had time to pop into the Rovers for a pint of beer after a shift. Irma worked as a barmaid in the Rovers and behind the counter at the Corner Shop. In 1965, she married footballer David Barlow and the pair bought the Corner Shop from Lionel Petty, leaving just Stan and Hilda in Number 13. As such, they struggled with money, though not quite to the extent that the Booths did. Stan left Hilda to pay the bills, leaving her with the burden and the worry that the family would fall into poverty. In 1968, David and Irma emigrated to Australia, meaning Hilda couldn't get freebies from the shop any more. Fortunately, Stan bought a window cleaning round, giving him his first permanent job since moving into Number 13.
Some time in the late 1960s, the electrics at Number 13 were rewired. There would not be another rewiring until 2008.
Dave Smith buys Number 13 and takes out Irma Barlow
In 1970, David Barlow and his son Darren were killed in a car crash in Australia. Irma, who was also in the crash, was in shock, but alive. Stan was loaned £600 by bookie Dave Smith to fly Irma back to the UK, and the widowed Irma moved back in with the Ogdens. In sympathy, the neighbours had given the Ogdens money to pay Dave back, but Stan used the money to invest in the Corner Shop to give Irma a job, and paid Dave back by selling him the house. Irma hated the shop, but worked there anyway to raise the money to buy the house back from Dave. It wasn't until Dave started dating Irma that Stan realised he had made a mistake - Dave was twice Irma's age, and Stan wanted to warn him away, but as he had the power to evict them Stan grudgingly gave his approval. When the Ogdens won £500 on premium bonds, Stan dashed Hilda's hopes of spending the money and used it to pay Dave back. The house was back in his name again.
Irma left Weatherfield again in 1972 to start a new life in Wales. Stan was growing older and had back problems, leaving him unable to work for a few periods in the 1970s. It was an unlucky decade for the Ogdens, so unlucky in fact that Hilda told Stan to change the house number to 12a, blaming their bad luck on the number 13. However, when they went outside to see the new numbers they were locked out, proving that the luck was down to them and not the house, so it was changed back to 13.
In 1973, while Hilda was away visiting her brother Archie Crabtree, Stan didn't take care of the house and his neighbour Elsie Tanner phoned the health inspectors. The house had to be fumigated as mice and cockroaches were found. That wasn't the end of the Ogdens' trouble with the health inspectors, as the following year while Hilda was on a working cruise holiday Stan was reported to the inspectors for keeping a donkey, Dolores, in Number 13's yard. When Hilda returned she was horrified to hear he had taken in lodgers - Tommy Deakin and Michael Ryan. He was off the hook when the lodgers returned and took Dolores with them.
Hilda shows off the mural to Bet Lynch and Annie Walker
Number 13 didn't exactly have all mod cons under the Ogdens - until 1976 they didn't have a television licence, and the set they had was black and white. Stan dropped the television while trying to hide it from the licence company, not knowing that Hilda had just bought a licence. As the TV was rented, Stan set fire to it to lead the company to believe it had burst into flames.
Later in 1976, ex-convict Eddie Yeats moved into Number 13 as a lodger. He didn't live there long, but after he moved out he was a regular guest. He got special wallpaper for Hilda when she was redecorating the main room, and she made a mural out of it, or "muriel" as Hilda called it, a picture of the Canadian Rockies she thought would give the house a touch of class, even though everybody else thought it was tasteless. When the house flooded in 1978, Hilda was horrified to find the mural was ruined, but refused to replace it with wallpaper, and chose another mural, this time of a seascape with flying ducks.
The houses in Coronation Street had no dividing walls between loft space, so when a slate was missing from Number 13's roof in 1978 a nest of pigeons were found in the loft of Number 11, home of Elsie Tanner. Hilda wasn't in a hurry to fix the problem as the pigeons weren't bothering her, but was fuming when Elsie's lodger Suzie Birchall accidentally put her foot through the ceiling in the Ogdens' bedroom while trying to block the gap in the roof left by the missing slate. Hilda expected Elsie to pay for the damage to her ceiling, but when Elsie refused Hilda did the same to her ceiling to get her own back. Elsie wasn't one to back down from a fight and the two camps tried as hard as possible to be nuisances to each other until Elsie took Hilda to court, where the Arbiter decided they should pay for their own repairs.
The Ogdens' later years in the house were met with financial woes mainly caused by Stan's declining health putting him out of work. Hilda got a second job, working as a housekeeper in Mike Baldwin's flat. In 1980, Eddie Yeats started living with them permanently when he started working as a binman. Eddie put a chicken coup in the yard, which Hilda was all set to get rid of until Eddie pointed out that their eggs could bring the Ogdens profit. When it was obvious that the chickens were making the Ogdens a laughing stock even more than usual, the chickens were roasted for food.
In 1981, Hilda got the itch to move to a bigger and better house to enjoy retirement and was advised to sell Number 13 for £7000. Stan objected, happy with a simple house with a pub just a few doors away, but Hilda put the house on sale anyway. The Bell family offered them £8000 but they were denied a mortgage so could only afford a house as good as the one they had now, and Hilda turned down the offer. Hilda was starting to worry she would end up living out her days in Number 13. In 1983, Eddie got married to Marion Willis and moved out, while Stan was getting ready to collect his pension, putting more pressure in Hilda to find more money from somewhere. Terry Duckworth was the Ogdens' lodger for a while in 1984.
Hilda is is mourning after Stan's death
Stan died in November 1984. Hilda put on a brave face, but Stan was her life and she was never quite the same afterwards. Number 13 was now Hilda's.
Feeling lonely, Hilda advertised for a lodger in early 1985, and took in Henry Wakefield. Henry was hounded by co-workers at Baldwin's Casuals when they found out he was a strike-breaker, and he left the street in shame.
Car mechanic Kevin Webster moved in later in the year, followed by his girlfriend Sally Seddon in 1986. Hilda was balancing her jobs at the Rovers and Mike's flat and got another job working for the Lowthers, a wealthy family she had become acquainted with. She was pressured into selling the house by Alf Roberts, who wanted to expand the Corner Shop. Hilda thought about accepting, mainly because she was told by Les Pringle that her roof needed repairs, when in fact it was fine. Kevin and Sally were married in 1986 and moved into their own flat. In 1987, Hilda was dismayed to learn the Lowthers were moving but she was asked by Doctor Lowther to keep house for him and live in a flat attached to the cottage. After 23 years, Hilda moved out of Number 13, to a better house and better life, and sold to the Websters at a generously low price.
The Websters
Terry Duckworth visits the redecorated Websters house
The Websters got off to a bad start in Number 13 when they were refused a mortgage because of unpaid debt Sally had from before she met Kevin. They had to pay the debt out of their savings and apply for a mortgage from another building society.
Sally's troublesome younger sister Gina Seddon dumped herself on the Websters in 1988 when her boyfriend Eddie was arrested for stealing a car. Gina was charged with being an accessory and put on probation, which meant the Websters were stuck with her for the time being. When her dad Eddie died Gina took the £1000 from his insurance and disappeared.
With Kevin's steady job at the garage, the Websters usually had more than enough money to live on, so when Sally fell pregnant in 1990 the pair were overjoyed. Kevin was an old-fashioned sort who thought his wife's place was in the house, looking after the family and serving the dinner. The couple's first daughter Rosie was born on Christmas Eve. Sally was happy to remain out of work to look after her at first. She later had a spell working in the Corner Shop. Then she became registered as a child minder when she was in trouble after David Platt fell down the stairs in her house while she was minding him for the Platts. This let her mind children in her own home, including David and the troublesome Jonathan Broughton, until his dad Joe tried to steal her away from Kevin.
Kevin's life was at the garage rather than at home, at a place where he could use his skills. He spent a few months out of work in 1991 but was bailed out by Mike Baldwin, who hired him to manage MVB Motors next to his factory in Coronation Street. He wasn't happy at first when Sally announced she was pregnant again in 1994, as he thought they couldn't afford it. Sally took on a job at the Kabin and became friends with Rita Sullivan, who was happy to help the Websters out with money when they needed it. Kevin came around to the idea eventually. Another daughter, Sophie, was born that same year.
In 1995, Kevin's dad Bill Webster returned to Weatherfield after ten years after his wife Elaine had an affair. Having never met Sally, he welcomed her back from a holiday by cooking dinner but burned the kitchen down. Sally was happy to have him live there there anyway as he rebuilt it himself and soon left to move into the Rovers.
Sally wanted to get a full-time job in 1996, tired of being a housewife, and thinking that with her wages they could afford someone to look after the girls. Kevin wasn't happy about it and tried to encourage her to stay at home by offering to buy into the garage, which was now owned by Don Brennan. They were on shaky ground as the business was going down the drain and the childminder Kelly Thomson wasn't available during all of Sally's working hours. The business soon folded but Kevin and Tony Horrocks bought the garage and Sally was promoted at Underworld, Mike's factory where she was working as a machinist.
After ten years of happy marriage, the Websters split when Kevin had an affair with Tony's mother Natalie Horrocks while Sally was away nursing her mother, who had suffered a stroke. Natalie assured Kevin there were no strings attached, but after a while she changed her mind and convinced Kevin to stay with her. When Sally found out about the affair, she threw Kevin out of the house and he went to live with Natalie, but by the end of the year he had come to his senses and went back to Sally. They got back together on Christmas Day. It wasn't to last, as Sally only really got back together for the kids and had an affair with Greg Kelly in 1998, and when Kevin found out he threw her out of Number 13. The couple divorced and Sally moved in with Greg and fought for custody of Rosie and Sophie, eventually winning and moving into Number 6 when Greg was violent, leaving just Kevin in Number 13. A depressed Kevin thought there was nothing left for him in Coronation Street and disappeared. Sally decided to move back into the house with the girls, until Kevin showed up again having suffered a breakdown. He decided to get on with his life and eventually remarried, to Alison Wakefield. Sally discovered she had unfinished business with Greg, who had been squandering her inheritance and was blackmailing Mike Baldwin over an affair. He let himself into the house and took the girls hostage to force Sally to help him. Sally was able to get help from Kevin and later the police and knocked him unconscious. Sally went on living at Number 13 with Rosie and Sophie.
In 2000 Sally started seeing Danny Hargreaves and let him move in with her. They were going to get married but Sally slept with Kevin the day before he married Alison, and confessed to Danny before the wedding, causing him to back out and leave the street. Kevin had become a widower when Alison ran in front of a lorry, distressed after her newborn baby had died from an infection. He suggested he and Sally get back together in 2002. Sally agreed, for the children's sake, but she made him sleep in the front room. Things eventually settled down and they remarried, Kevin because he still loved Sally, knowing full well she didn't love him as she once did. She had a brief fling with her employer, garage owner Ian Davenport.
Bill briefly lived with the Websters again in 2006 while visiting from Germany and started an affair with Audrey Roberts. On Christmas Day his then wife Maureen showed up and found out, and the couple separated. Bill moved in with Audrey in 2007.
Rosie and John Stape are almost caught in bed
Despite things long since having gone back to normal with the Websters' marriage, Sally was unhappy with their two now teenage daughters having to live in a terraced house in a back street. She always pushed them to succeed, and was disappointed when Rosie seemed to be ruining her life, first by having underage sex with Craig Harris then an affair with a teacher John Stape in 2007. Sally herself desired Mr. Stape, and the family Christmas in 2007 was ruined when the affair was exposed when Stape unwittingly gave Rosie and his girlfriend Fiz Brown each other's gifts. Stape went round to Number 13 hoping to rectify his mistake before it was discovered but he was too late and Kevin beat him up. Stape left Coronation Street and Rosie got bored with him.
Sally and Claire Peacock plan the house swap
Sally's hopes for a bigger house came to fruition in 2008 when neighbours the Peacocks, who lived at the more modern Number 4 across the street, were financially crippled from poor business in Ashley Peacock's butcher shop. Claire Peacock wanted to downsize while they built up their bank balance again, and Sally suggested the two families swap houses! It wasn't easy to convince Kevin as he was perfectly happy with Number 13 but the wives planned it all and put it into motion very quickly. The estate agent valued Number 13 at £98,000, more than was expected - contrary to Number 4, which the Websters got at a bargain. Sally and Claire's bickering about prices almost put an end to the plans, and for a while the Peacocks went through an estate agent to sell their house properly, and not to the Websters, but the house swap was back on when they decided it was much less bothersome. In June 2008, the Websters moved out and the Peacocks moved in - almost.
The Peacocks
Butcher Ashley Peacock, his wife Claire, and their two boys Joshua and Freddie Peacock were forced out of the house on moving day because of some pettiness from Sally, who had taken the fuses from the fuse box, which exploded when Ashley was checking it. The house was left without electricity and the Peacocks were told another rewiring would take weeks. They temporarily lodged at their old house.
Fortunes improved when Claire was raiding Number 13's attic, finding first what she believed to be an original Lowry painting (but what was actually painted by Irma Ogden) and then some concert programmes, including one from a performance by The Beatles from 1963, which earned the Peacocks a tidy sum of £7,000.
As of April 2009, The Peacocks are currently living in number 13.
Tenancy
Owners
- Edward Wormold - ?-1962, 1963-1964
- Jerry Booth - 1962-1963
- Stan Ogden - 1964-1970
- Dave Smith - 1970-1971
- Stan Ogden - 1971-1984
- Hilda Ogden - 1984-1987
- Kevin Webster - 1987-2008
- Ashley Peacock - 2008-
Residents
- Martha Longhurst - 1937-1943
- May Hardman - 1955-1960
- Christine Hardman - 1955-1962
- Jerry Booth - 1963-1964
- Myra Booth - 1963-1964
- Stan Ogden - 1964-1984
- Hilda Ogden - 1964-1987
- Irma Ogden - 1964-1966, 1970
- Trevor Ogden - 1964
- Jim Mount - 1966
- Tommy Deakin - 1974
- Michael Ryan - 1974
- Eddie Yeats - 1976, 1980-1983
- Terry Duckworth - 1984
- Henry Wakefield - 1985
- Kevin Webster - 1985-1987, 1988-1997, 1997-1999, 2002-2008
- Sally Webster - 1986-1987, 1988-1998, 1999-2008
- Gina Seddon - 1988-1989
- Rosie Webster - 1990-2008
- Sophie Webster - 1994-2008
- Bill Webster - 1995, 2006, 2007
- Danny Hargreaves - 2000-2001