Coronation Street and the Real Mary King’s Close

If you are one of our many readers that are familiar with Coronation Street, one of the UK’s longest running and best loved soap operas, then you might not immediately spot the connection with the Real Mary King’s Close.

In fact, the differences between the two locations are glaringly obvious. Coronation Street is set in Manchester while Mary King's Close is in Edinburgh, a distance in space of approximately 200 miles.

Furthermore, The Real Mary King’s Close depicts the life of men and women who lived, loved and died in the 16th Century Edinburgh slums, while Corrie tells stories about Manchester’s working class in the 20th and 21st Centuries. This gap equates to 400 years between the two streets.

If the residents had met, would they have shared much in common? What would the residents of 16th Century Edinburgh have made of industrialisation, television and One Direction?  Would the drinkers at Coronation Street’s ‘Rover’s Return’ be able to empathise with outbreaks of plague and the problem of keeping your household pig warm over the winter months? Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t.

A real life soap opera


This being said; the two streets do share something in common. The residents of Corrie and the Real Mary King's Close are gritty, larger than life characters, never short of a personal drama or three, and both streets have born witness to some of the biggest historical events of their age.

It doesn't stop there. Our parent company, Continuum Leading Attractions, has recently been licensed to run the official tours of the ‘real' Coronation St, on Quay St in Manchester. Now, visitors to the Corrie set will be able to see the residents of the Real Mary King's Close peering back through history in a poster on Coronation Street's iconic bus stop.

So if you find yourself south of the border come along and join one of the Coronation Street tours. In the meantime, come and visit us at the Real Mary King's Close, and discover a real historical soap opera lurking beneath the cobbled streets of old Edinburgh.