The real-life Ackley Bridge
RESIDENTS LIFT LID ON WHAT IT’S LIKE LIVING ON STREETS WHERE HIT TV SHOW WAS FILMED
NEIGHBOURS on the Halifax street at the centre of the hit TV show Ackley Bridge have spilt the beans on what life is really like there during filming and when the cameras have gone.
The Channel 4 show, which follows the lives of students and teachers at the fictional Ackley Bridge College, returns for a fourth series tonight.
The first three series focused largely on the friendship between two main characters, Missy and Nas, who both lived on a bustling terraced street with a close-knit, largely Asian, community.
The production company chose Vaughan Street, in the Kings Cross area, as the setting for their home.
Chevonne Haynes, who lives opposite Missy’s house, said: “Everybody gets along on our street but we’re not like close-close like how they are on the TV.
“If there was a burglary everybody watches out for each other but it’s not like we’re having street parties all the time.”
She said residents were told, via a note through the door, a few days before filming started that their street was about to be filled with production equipment, the crew and the cast. It meant huge restrictions on what residents could do in their own homes.
“When they were here filming it was their street,” said Chevonne. “So little ones weren’t allowed to play out in the garden because they were making too much noise, we weren’t allowed to peg our clothes out.
“If they were filming and we had to go to the shop we had to come out and ask when we could come out of the garden they’d have to get everyone out of the way.”
One of the iconic images of the show has been the two main characters sat chatting on a sofa perched in a skip up the road from their houses.
That skip, which overlooked a skyline of Halifax, was on real-life Irving Street.
Richard Deaden, who regularly visits his girlfriend’s house in Irving Street, revealed a person was employed to sit and watch the skip overnight during filming periods.
He said: “They used to have a guy and he’d sit in his car all night watching the skip to make sure nobody came and took anything off it for continuity.
“They’d film two or three days at a time and all night he’d just sit there. Nice work if you can get it.”
Nas and Missy both exited the show at the end of series three, meaning Irving Street and Vaughan Street will no longer feature so prominently.
But Richard and Chevonne said crews were back for one day of filming a couple of months ago.
Chevonne explained: “They only did two shots because one character who lived here has died and the other has gone off to university.
“It wasn’t manic, like it has been for the past couple of years.”
The closing scene of the third series shows the skip being removed as Nas sets off to university, paving the way for a new cast of characters joining the show.
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