Coronation Street’s Rovers Return Inn has seen many different faces behind the bar over the years, from iconic landladies Annie Walker and Bet Lynch, as well as a rare number of landlords, including Fred Elliot and Peter Barlow.
The beloved boozer in the heart of Weatherfield, located at the corner of Coronation Street and Rosamund Street, was first opened in 1902 as part of a chain of Weatherfield pubs owned by brewery Newton & Ridley. But the brewery sold the Rovers in 1995, and since then it has been a free house,
At the time, the pub consisted of three areas known as the public, snug and select function room. It was modernised following a fire in 1986, before a second fire in 2013, which resulted in the death of barmaid Sunita Alahan.
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The first tenants to manage the Rovers Return were said to be Jim and Nellie Corbishley, who opened the pub’s doors in August 1902, and were the tenants of the local brewery, Newton & Ridley.
But the first couple to actually own the freehold of the pub were Jack and Vera Duckworth, who purchased it when the brewery sold the pub and it became a free house in 1995, 35 years after Corrie’s first episode aired back in December 1960.
Jack and Vera Duckworth(Image: ITV)
However, Corrie’s first Rovers barmaid made her debut two weeks after the ITV soap launched. Irish actress Doreen Keogh played Concepta Regan (nee Riley).
She first appeared on the cobbles in the fifth episode, when she was seen returning from a festive visit to her family in Ireland, then stayed in the soap for four years before returning in 1967 and several times in the 1970s.
During this time, she dated on-screen husband, actor Ivan Beavis, who played widowed bus driver Harry Hewitt. One of her biggest storylines was the kidnapping of the Hewitts’ son, Christopher, in 1962. It was in 1967, during a visit to Weatherfield for Elsie Tanner’s wedding to Steve Tanner, that Harry was crushed to death by Len Fairclough’s van after a jack collapsed.
Keogh, who also appeared in Father Ted and Cold Feet, and played neighbour Mary Carroll in The Royle Family, died on New Year’s Eve 2017 in Ireland, aged 91.
Annie Walker and Conepta Riley in the early years of Coronation Street(Image: Granada Television)
Current Rovers landlady Maggie Driscoll, despite Eva Price’s name being above the door, is also played by former Father Ted actress Pauline McLynn, who spoke about not being the first Irish woman behind the famous bar when she joined Corrie last year.
She told the Manchester Evening News and other press at the time: “Somebody got on touch with me on social media and sent me a picture of the first-ever barmaid in the Rovers Return, between 1960 and 1964, played by an Irish woman, Doreen Keogh, and she was in lots of other things.
“She was the Irish neighbour in The Royle Family, she’s also the woman Mrs Doyle wrestled to the floor about paying a bill… And she was the first-ever barmaid, and she was called Concepta Riley. So there’s a long tradition of the Irish in the Rovers.”