The real Crossroads Motel!

This was what passed for the Crossroads ­motel in the Sixties television soap. Behind these utilitarian walls, viewers were told, illicit affairs were two-a-penny, arson was rife, an old First World War bomb blew up ­reception and motel cleaner Amy Turtle was ­unmasked as a Russian spy who had changed her name from Amelia Turtlovski.

The location of the motel’s real-life exterior of was kept secret for 45 years, for fear that fans would turn up and cause disruption. Only months ago the Crossroads Appreciation Society discovered that the “real” motel was this teaching block at Walford and North Shropshire College in Baschurch, Shropshire.

The block was used as the exterior title shot from 1965 to 1981, when it was still known as the Shropshire Farm Institute. Now, in a twist ­worthy of the soap itself, it turns out members identified it in the nick of time ­because it is just about to be bulldozed to make way for an engineering college. Fan John Drury, from Sheffield, said: “The Crossroads society has spent a long time ­researching the locations and once I found it, the site manager showed me round. It’s a shame it is going.”

Crossroads, which revolved around the lives of owner Meg Richardson and her family, pulled in 18 million viewers at its peak and ran from 1964 to 1988, being briefly revived on ­Carlton in 2001.