Lower Broughton is a suburb of the City of Salford, adjoining and immediately to the west of Manchester. A Roman road ran through the area and the township of Broughton dates back to 1177. The manor of the area was for several centuries in the ownership and control of the wealthy Clowes family with the buildings erected in the Higher Broughton area including many family villas and other imposing edifices whereas the Lower Broughton area became a mass of terraced houses, most of which were demolished in the slum clearances schemes of the 1960s and 1970s.
Brian Tilsley and Gail Potter were married by Father Harris at St. Boniface Church in Lower Broughton in November 1979, and their son Nicholas Paul Tilsley was christened here (again in a service officiated by Father Harris) in January 1981.
Title sequence[]
Coronation Street's third title sequence in 1975 was principally filmed in the Lower Broughton area. The shots were directed by Ken Grieve accompanied by cameraman Ray Goode. Other filming for the sequence was conducted in Ashton Old Road in Manchester. In 1976 new producer Bill Podmore had the sequence revamped as he was unhappy with the relatively fast pace of the footage, feeling its tempo was not suited to the more decorous pace of Eric Spear's music. He watched all of the footage and selected both old and new shots, including the now famous cat.
In the spring of 1982 a lengthy correspondence began on the letters page of the Manchester Evening News about the identity of the cat. Writers insisted that the cat was Whiskey, by then deceased, which had belonged to a Mrs Norma Royle of 21 Duchess Street in Lower Broughton however Eric Rosser, then the programme's archivist, insisted the cat shot came from the sequences shot at the back of a garage on Ashton Old Road.