walking tour: Granadaland

Granadaland is a walking tour around one of the most layered and fast-changing parts of Manchester.

The name comes from Granada Television, whose former Quay Street studios became home to Coronation Street, World in Action, University Challenge, The Beatles’ first television performance, and later the much-loved Granada Studios Tour.

But this is not just a tour about Granada TV.

Like the medieval quarter, Granadaland is about an area - a part of the city where several different versions of Manchester can still be read in the streets, buildings and fragments that remain.

We’ll begin near Aviva Studios, before tracing the story back to the canal age, including the remains of the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal. From there, we’ll move towards the 1830 Liverpool Road Station, now part of the Science and Industry Museum, and look at how canals, railways and warehouses helped transform what had once been the edge of town.

The route then moves into the world of Granada Television: the studios, the office block, the old entrance gates, the former outdoor sets, the story of Coronation Street, and the site of the Granada Studios Tour.

Along the way, we’ll also look at how the area is changing again today, with Aviva Studios, hotels, bars, studios, apartments, offices and cultural spaces creating a new chapter in the life of this part of Manchester.

From canals to railways, warehouses to television studios, theme park to cultural district, Granadaland is a walk through nearly two centuries of reinvention.