Gorton is a suburb of the City of Manchester and lies immediately south-east to the city centre. The district was fully incorporated into the city in 1909 and, like most parts of inner-city Manchester, was almost totally covered by Coronation Street-type terraced housing until the 1960s and early 1970s after which a "slum clearance" programme swept them away.
The Belle Vue Zoological Gardens and Amusement Park were located in Gorton until their closure in 1982 and eventual clearance in 1986.
In March 1985, tiring of hearing Hilda Ogden boasting of her prowess in reading fortunes in tea leaves, Bet Lynch conspired with Betty Turpin and Wilf Starkey to set her up by making it seem as if her predictions were coming true. Hilda had stated that Wilf would travel east and he later told Hilda he'd been invited to a friend's in Gorton, east of Weatherfield. Soon afterwards, Hilda was upset when she was told of the joke but it backfired on a shocked Bet when her itinerant Uncle Ted appeared - Hilda has predicted that Bet would soon hear from a relative.
Machinist Shirley Armitage moved to the suburb in 1989 after quitting her job at Baldwin's Casuals and having walked out on her relationship with Curly Watts.
Local businessmen Dev Alahan had a chain of seven shops with one of them located in Gorton. It was here in November 2005, that his pregnant wife Sunita had tracked down an employee named Sandra who revealed that Dev had fathered her two children. Shortly after their encounter, Sunita learned that Shareen - another Gorton employee, was also one of Dev's offspring.
Under the pretence of finding suitable property for charity Roof & Refuge to purchase in Gorton, Ken Barlow's conniving grandson James Cunningham hoodwinked Sophie Webster and Sian Powers into running their Weatherfield soup kitchen in June 2011, only for them to be left feeling gutted when James told them they'd failed to lock up properly and the premises had been burgled. The pair duly attended a property auction the following month, where they were perplexed to find a property developer had purchased the Gorton property, and neither James nor his fellow charity worker Rob White were in attendance.
Tez, the dodgy best friend of Karl Munro, was also a Gorton resident.