Oh ok, so if I understand it correctly, the houses were kind of like apartments, except they were regular houses stuck together like puzzle pieces. I'm sure if I lived there I wouldn't have such a hard time understanding. LOL
This description from Alan Bell's book,
Last of the Summer Wine; From the Director's Chair, might help you visualize the layout. Or it might leave you hopelessly confused!
"One of the best known settings of Last of the Summer Wine is the Nora Batty location. But a great deal of work had to be done to make it look like her home. Looking at it from outside, just inside the front door is a staircase that leads up to the real occupants' living quarters. These stairs have to be carefully avoided by our camera whenever the front door is opened in a scene, because in the studio, our set is just a hallway with no stairs.
"Outside, to the left of the front door, is the window of Nora's living room- but the window really belongs to the commercial property next door where the occupants kindly allow us to take down their shutters and put up our Nora Batty curtains.
"To the right of the front door is Nora's kitchen. This really is a kitchen, but the sink is on the back wall and not at the window- where Nora has to be positioned for her exchanges with Compo. A false sink at the window, with a bucket beneath to collect the water from its drain easily overcomes that problem.
"The sink must have looked quite realistic, for when a young design assistant was asked to empty the bucket of water, she very carefully removed it from beneath the sink and promptly poured it back down the sink drain. Much to her embarrassment, the water went everywhere.
"Compo's bedroom window has to be positioned where he can open it and verbally harass Nora Batty on the landing beneath. But Compo's home is in the basement, below Nora's kitchen window and there is no bedroom window for Compo, nor is there a logical place for one to be seen. The solution was to use one of the windows belonging to the bookshop on the corner of the block. By never simultaneously seeing Compo at his window and Nora on the landing below, the viewers accept that Compo's basement flat has an upstairs window that is somewhere in the area next to Nora's kitchen window. Visitors to the filming were always confused by seeing Compo at the bookshop window, acting to the bristle end of a broom (to denote the position of Nora's face), or Nora herself, acting to a mark on the wall where Compo would be."
I don't know for sure, but wouldn't be surprised if the 'commercial property next door' fronts on Huddersfield Road. Also, later in the series they apparently used a different window for Compo's bedroom, as the drain pipe and smaller window to his left changed, although the actual drain pipe and window hadn't changed by the time the Google Earth photos were taken, several years later.
Bell's book is a good read and I highly recommend it, along with the Andrew Vine book,
Last of the Summer Wine; The Inside Story of the World's Longest-Running Comedy Programme.
Marianna
