The complex is very interesting because then you have the water tower, leading onto the back of what’s now the Museum of Science and Industry site, and of course what people forget about the Museum of Science and Industry is that within the complex is the first passenger railway station in the world, and so beyond that railway station at the 1830 warehouse is a bridge across the Irwell that carries the railway line across the Irwell. That is the first place anywhere in the world that a railway line crossed water! And Granada Television sits within those 500 square metres. It’s just astonishing. So by the time you get Baker Street built in the back lot of a Grade I-listed warehouse and railway station, you’ve got a fantasy world the likes of which just hasn’t otherwise existed. So the complex that goes all around there on the banks of the Irwell was something else. And remember, it’s Water Street and Quay Street, and therefore when you looked across at the Bonded Warehouse, which sadly burned down one night right towards the end of the Jewel in the Crown shoot, thereby releasing an awful lot of insurance money for Granada, and also, by the way, being filmed as it was burning, and that footage was actually used in a later Sherlock Holmes. But that complex, Quay Street, Water Street, the warehouses, the Bonded Warehouse, it only tells you that the Irwell navigation was a very, very, very significant inland port, long before the Salford docks, long before the Manchester Ship Canal. So in other words, Granada sits in this real, dense complex not far away from the Roman fortress as well, and of course from Liverpool Road and Deansgate as well, which are, you know, the two northern roads that intersect. And getting all that rolling through –having studios sitting on top of a culverted canal that wheels its way into the River Irwell close by the railway station and close by the Bridgwater Canal and close by all of that, is phenomenal. It’s the biggest concentration of northern cornerstones that you can possibly imagine.
