[chrisdafur]

I heard they owned a fair few houses and some where flats that he would rent out to the cast etc/ or they could stay in while filming.

I did read that Brookside owned "13 houses"- though that would depend on the definition of house, whether they classed the semis and triples as one house or two/three. Considering that bloke is shouting from one of the off-close houses, that would suggest the former, which means they probably owned around half of the houses that weren't on the close itself!

I wonder if they moved some facilities away from the houses when they opened all the stuff in Childwall? Probably little need to have things like the post production, accounting, admin etc. actually on the close once they had those facilities.

I've looked at Google Maps, some photos of the houses and I think these are the original 13 houses they purchased.



From this Back Stage Tour video is looks like 1-3 were used as the Gallery, Wardrobe & Makeup. No 4 was the Canteen. 5-10 are the houses used on screen. From the Open Air video that James2001 first posted it looked like 11-13 are Reception & the Admin offices, although Phil seems to overlook number 11. The point I've marked as A seems to be where the Finance office portakabin was. B is where the security building would have been.  

This Transdiffusion article seems to suggest they purchased a further seven houses immediate area in later years. I'm guessing one of these may have be house C as Phil seems to be talking to someone in the window of this house at the start of the Open Air Video.

Although the Back Stage Tour video is pretty long it does some interesting insights about how the houses are wired up and some of the tricks they used on screen. They cover the Parade and and how it was originally a science block and some of the additional indoor sets at Childwall.