I live in New Zealand, about as far away as you can get from Doncaster . A few years ago we did a family trip over several weeks to Europe, the shop at 35 Lister Ave , Doncaster was on our list of things to find as we all loved the series so much . I even brought back a couple of pieces of brick and mortar that was loose on the pavement ,that had obviously fallen from somewhere near the front window . we all still watch the episodes , never get tired of the humour .
I lived in Balby about 75 years ago when I was a child. My father was a policeman and we lived in a Police House, with cells and an Exercise Yard, overlooking the River Don. The dog used to sleep in a cell during the night and in the Exercise Yard during the day...Happy Days.
There was a guy in Hull called Jack Kaye who ran a little corner shop and was from the same mould as Arkwright. You would go to the shop for a jar of coffee and come home with mop heads and an arm full of stuff you couldn't even remember buying. I swear the guy was a hypnotist!
@@TheVillageIdiot It used to be on Ella Street on the corner with Salisbury Street. The shop was demolished and they put a little close of new builds there, but they named a path/cut through that led to the shop as Jack Kaye Walk.
Thank you for this of course. We went there and found it in June 1988; after the original series had ended but of course before the later one started so too. Very interesting so too-well done!
I grew up with this kind of humour and it's so good to revisit it here on You Tube. Modern humour just isn't the same, mind you, nothing is, is it...........
Absolutely wonderful brilliant,, you look and see the old old days of living,the houses,shops,people, the lady carrying her shopping bag ,ahh wonderful.
My previous job, I used to have to deliver round there on occasions , this was when still open all hours was being made , I was never working aorund there when they were filming though.
Thanks. I often wondered where the filming location was. This was a really entertaining and funny show back in the day. I used to watch it nearly every week. I reckon its main reason for success was due to the late great Ronnie Barker. I mean, he just had that magic touch and made everything he was in turn to goldust. Best wishes 👍
A few years ago I nearly rented a house in Lister Avenue, almost opposite Arkwright's shop. I was ready to move in when some scrote broke in and ripped out the plumbing to sell for scrap, probably to feed his drug habit. Last time I went to Donnie that house was for sale and it looks from your video that it still is. Beautique was also for sale a few years ago. Being the set for Open All Hours did nothing to boost the asking price. I expect you can still buy a two-up two-down terraced house in Donnie starting from about 50 grand. The former mining villages in the area were even cheaper!
The amateurs at my local theatre in Lincolnshire did Open All Hours a fortnight ago combining various scenes from different episodes. Pretty much sold out every night which is far more support than most shows receive.
I always have mixed feelings about this show. It was both the highlight of my school days sunday evenings, but I really didn't like school and it was the last thing I wanted before going to bed. It's ending signalled the end of the weekend. Today however I can enjoy it fully. Great series and my kids like it as well.
Although it was a BBC favourite, there was something sad and old fashioned due to the ambience of this sit-com. The northern feel and look of the old corner shop had a feeling of cold grey days as if it were from times way past but somehow still had some modern elements to it.
we live in york but have family local to doncaster, everytime we get a new car etc we get a photo of it outside the old shop, obviously over the road is the fictitious home of nurse Gladys Emanual, but what many dont know is that 2 different house where used as the original house owners opted out of further filming during the run of the show.
Originally this video was a bit longer. I had to cut a piece out about the 2013 reboot where Granville was the shopkeeper, carrying on after his late uncle. RU-vid didn't like the piece of footage I used though!
My house was a corner shop. if you look carefully, the bay window has been reset onto the first floor. This was to allow for the shop front. Took me a few years to notice the difference.
The corner shops were the cornerstone of society back in the days. No one had a car, the men worked at the local mills and the housewives rarely ever ventured out of their immediate areas.
There were no mills in Doncaster. The plum job for a working man was at Doncaster Plant but there was also Peglers, which I think is still there, and a lot of other factories a couple of blocks from the street where this was filmed. If you didn't want to build and maintain steam engines there was the Case tractor factory on the Wheatley Hall Road.
When I was fifteen, during the war I worked in a corner shop in Edinburgh. We knew personally every customer and their families. I never remember seeing a strange face in the shop. The customers lived within a two street area. We never displayed goods outside but the window was dressed every morning with fresh seasonal fruit and veg.
I remember the first time I went past the shop I was doing a delivery to the aforementioned Balby Carr Bank industrial estate, missed the turn off for the place I was delivering to and decided to do a "u-turn" in the nearest estate and ended up going on Lister Ave. unwittingly. 🤣
4:28 It was Ronnie Barker (Not the writer Roy Clarke) who had the idea to give Arkwright that stammer. They were reading through the script for the very first time and Barker just sort of slipped it in for effect and they said "Leave that in!" Many moons ago my dad used to deliver milk to that street. (Amongst many others of course)
Brings back brilliant memories of the days when we had real communities who worked and helped one another together. These places are now run down and often spoiled by out of control young people, often gangs up to no good. Drugs, drink, loud music, electric bikes, noise, pranks and vandalism, targeted attacks and ghetto behaviour.....(renters with no pride).... much less of the old friendly neighbours, good hard working families looking out for one another with a corner shop and pub to meet up regularly. This is Britain today in so many of these traditional areas, once places we happily grew up in harmony together
As a kid I went and watched it been filmed.I got Ronnie Barker`s autograph, my bic pen leaked on him so he got another pen and signed. One night we came across David Jason practicing a dance and I got his autograph too.
my grandad had a corner shop from the late 40s right through to the mid 70s he sod what people needed he would open at around 6 oclock in the morning to catch the workers some of them didnt have the money to pay for what they needed my grandad would let them have what they needed and would write there names in a little book come payday they would pay him what they owed but come the week after they owed him again good times long gone now trusting times
I subscribed when I came across your Gunness video (I live up the road from there in Scunthorpe) and have watched regularly since but never expected such a treat as this trip down memory lane!
In the early 2000's the council were talking about flattening the whole area and redeveloping it. Nothing came of it, but hopefully the shop will be saved or rebuilt somewhere else when and if it does happen.
other locations in donny are the balmoral hotel on thorne rd , now a private house , a second hand shop on highfield rd wheatly and a cafe on holmes market nr beckett rd wheatly !
I used to live opposite the second hand shop, it was a dump of a place, I knew the owner well, his name was Barney, but what most people didn't know was that he had tenants living in the cellar, we called them the "cellar dwellers," 2 families were living down there, oh and another piece of useless information, Barney had a striplight hanging in the window which he never turned off, in over 20 years of him having the shop, he never had to change the bulb once, Barney was dodgy but he was great with the locals, I spent many hours talking to him on a weekend.
@@TheVillageIdiot I did watch to the end 😀 but I thought you had said that it's no longer a shop as it was now a beauty salon as if you thought it used to be a real shop in the 70s / 80s when it was filmed.
The area is all like Lister Street. Terraced housing everywhere. You wouldn't be seeing anything different. As for the shop, I cannot film inside it. Its private property.
Ah, those were the "good ol' days." A time when people knew what humour and laughing was all about. If that programme was on now, I'd bet a pound to a pinch of sugar that somebody with a speech impediment would want the show banned and go for damages, (Because they are 'offended') assisted by a 'Human Rights Lawyer' who is only interested in the 'wedge that he/she would make from it. To quote a word from a Beatles song, "Yesterday....................!"
