By Elliott West
“There’s some very peculiar people in this street”.
Ena Sharples
Introduction
Violet Carson was the original battle axe in Coronation Street as Ena Sharples. A god-fearing, Christian woman who sat in a frosted glass booth in the snug of the Rovers Return, sipping on a half-pint of milk stout, gossiping with Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst. She loved to get into verbal scrapes with Elsie Tanner and wore her haircut and coat with pride. A lady with an acid tongue and brass neck but someone the characters would turn to for wise advice. Whether she was in the corner shop, cafe, Kabin or the Rovers, Ena could fear god into you with just one icy stare. The archetypal Mancunian who could fire abuse from a thousand paces whilst tucking into an Eccles cake and sipping a cup of piping hot tea. Her bark was worse than her bite but by heck you didn’t want to cross her. Yet Ena could show her softer side behind this Teflon exterior, a sucker for entertainment and family.
Behind the Hairnet
Violet was specifically chosen for the role of Ena after Tony Warren, the brainchild of Coronation Street worked with her as a child actor on Children’s Hour. Carson was by then a veteran of entertainment, an actor and a performer who had been around since the early days of radio. Born in 1898 during the reign of Queen Victoria, Violet Helen Carson was born in Ancoats, Manchester. Her Scottish father, William Brown Carson ran a flour mill and her mother Mary was an amateur singer. As a child, Violet took up piano lessons and played in the local cinema as the musical background to silent films and talkies came about, she turned to singing.
Married at the age of 28 in 1926 to the road contractor, George Peploe, this marriage would sadly end in tragedy when George suddenly died in 1929 at the age of 31. They never had any children and Violet would never remarry. In 1935 Carson went to work at BBC Radio in Manchester, performing comical musical numbers and light operatic arias in radio shows such as Songs at the Piano. A regular performer on Children’s Hour on the BBC Home Service, she was also on Nursery Sing Song from Manchester. She would also go to work on Woman’s Hour and acted in numerous radio dramas.
“I’d just like to go like the way me mother did; she just sat up broke wind, and died”.
Ena Sharples
Coronation Street
Originally to be entitled Florizel Street and based on Tony Warren’s experiences of growing up in Swinton, Greater Manchester, the Granada bosses rubbished the title saying it sounded like a brand of disinfectant. Violet was 62 when she got the part but when she donned the wig, hairnet and coat, looked considerably older. Unlike her embattled character, Violet was a lovely, warm person, well-spoken and reminds me of Noele Gordon who played Meg Richardson/Mortimer in Crossroads minus the champagne and Rolls Royce lifestyle. Tony Warren knew when she first auditioned for the role of Ena in character that she was the one. His words fitted her like a glove, brash, like Churchill in a woman’s clothing. A woman who had a stern expression who sank a thousand ships, a bulldog chewing a wasp.
This was television soap opera in its infancy, a Mancunian kitchen sink drama that had more grime on it than the weathered chimney pots that towered over this working-class street. With its shaky credits and grainy filming. There were only 20 actors when Coronation first aired in 1960 and Ena Sharples made an instant mark. Scripts that were beautifully crafted around characters such as the now-only original member Ken Barlow played by William Roache, Doris Speed as Annie Walker, Pat Phoenix as Elsie Tanner, her stage son Philip Lowrie as Dennis Tanner and Jack Howarth as Albert Tatlock.
The set may have been rudimentary and amateur but the script was dynamite. Originally envisaged as only a short-running drama series, it has turned out to be a soap opera that weathered the test of time. A drama that graced our television screens since 1960, outlining numerous Prime Ministers and world events and cast iron as one of Betty’s notorious hot pots. A drama that isn’t afraid to tackle real-life issues and brilliantly mixes raw drama with comedy pathos.
Walking off the Cobbles
As for Violet Carson, well her character of Ena Sharples stood the test of time, present in the soap from 1960-1980. Despite poor health in the 1970s and a stroke that forced Violet out of the soap for most of 1974, she still managed to make appearances until she decided to go and stay with a friend, Mr Foster in Lytham St Annes while her flat at the street’s community centre was being renovated. A place were Ena believed that the air was better to breathe. A final scene that was beautifully played out between herself, Ken Barlow and Albert Tatlock in April 1980. However, in real life, Violet became ill with pernicious anaemia and although a door was left open for her return, she never graced the famous cobbles again. Living with sister in a bungalow in Bispham, Blackpool, she shunned the limelight and never made any further public appearances. A year after retirement, she underwent surgery for an abscess but never fully recovered. Violet Carson passed away aged 85 on Boxing Day in 1983 after suffering a heart attack and was cremated in a private ceremony at Carleton Crematorium in Blackpool.
Violet’s Legacy
As Ena Sharples, Violet ruled the roost. Her performances were so powerful and memorable that they are still talked about today. If you put Ena in a room with Bet Lynch, Hilda Ogden, Elsie Tanner, Ivy Tilsley and Annie Walker, there would be an almighty verbal explosion. A female catfight that anyone would pay their last pound to watch. She would have had Margaret Thatcher shaking in her heels, a reinforced lady that had a steel punch with her tongue. She says what she means and means what she says. As Ena, she represented something that was gradually dying out, a nostalgia that viewers instantly warmed to and clung to. She once said that if she couldn’t be Vi Carson, she would rather be Ena Sharples than anybody else. An icon in her own right, fierce, punchy but an absolute gem in real life. Her picture still hangs over the stairs at Granada Studios in Manchester, casting her watchful eye over the present cast.
