Bowness in 1969
Bowness-on-Windermere is a town in the Lake District on the shores of Lake Windermere. Historically a fishing village, the town grew in size in the 19th century on the back of a burgeoning tourist industry, fuelled in part by the arrival of the railway to the nearby town of Windermere, a growth so large that the two towns merged into one council in 1905.
In October 1969, the residents of Coronation Street took a daytrip to the Lakes and Bowness was their first stopping off point for a toilet break. At the nearby jetty, Ena Sharples and Minnie Caldwell enjoyed an ice cream while Stan and Hilda Ogden planned to take a rowing boat out on the Lake but were called back to the coach by Emily Nugent before they could take advantage of the three shillings they had paid for the privilege.
The Ogdens prepare for their aborted rowing trip on the lake
- Bowness was the first filming point for the cast and crew in the Lakes for Episode 923 (29th October 1969), the programme's second all-location episode and the only episode of the programme ever to be made entirely on film. Newspaper publicity photographs were taken of the cast near the lakefront in Bowness. Use was made of the town's coach park on Rectory Road for filming and a jetty near to the Bowness Pier ferry terminal.