Violet Carson

Violet Helen Carson, OBE (1 September 1898 – 26 December 1983) was an English actress of radio and television, and a singer and pianist, who had a long and celebrated career as an actress and performer during the early days of BBC radio, and during the latter decades of her life as the matronly gossip Ena Sharples in the ITV television soap opera Coronation Street.

Early life and career

Carson was born on German Street in Ancoats, Manchester. Her father ran a flour mill and her mother was an amateur singer. As a child, she took piano lessons whilst attending Church of England school, Carson performed with her younger sister Nellie as a singing act called the Carson Sisters. She then became a cinema pianist providing the musical accompaniment for silent films.

Radio and theatre career

In 1935 Carson joined BBC Radio in Manchester, singing a range of material from comic musical hall style songs to light operatic arias. She began in a show called Songs at the Piano and was a regular member of Children's Hour on the BBC Home Service and was the star of Nursery Sing Song from Manchester, in which she frequently sang with producer Trevor Hill, many years her junior. Contrary to popular opinion she was never known as Auntie Vi, that epithet belonging only to Violet Fraser back in the 1920s. "I was never anyone's aunt" exclaimed Carson when Hill produced a BBC Radio programme about her in 1981. She worked with the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts during the Second World War and was for six years the pianist for the Mabel and Wilfred Pickles radio show Have A Go. Her extensive radio career included a period as a presenter and interviewer on Woman's Hour for five years and she acted in numerous radio dramas. On stage her curriculum vitae included playing the Duchess of York in William Shakespeare's tragedy Richard III.

Rosa 'Violet Carson'

Violet Carson is a salmon pink rose cultivar, an uncommon hybrid of the red hybrid tea 'Mme Léon Cuny' (Gaujard 1955) and the orange floribunda 'Spartan' (Boerner 1955), created by Samuel McGredy IV between 1963 and 1964. It was named after the English actress Violet Carson (1898-1983), who played Ena Sharples in the British soap opera Coronation Street.

The dense semi-double flowers reach an average diameter of 8 centimetres (3.1 in) with up to 35 petals, and appear in loose clusters of 3 to 15 in flushes throughout the season. They have a mild to strong, sweet musk fragrance and an elegant bloom form with outer petals that bend decoratively outwards. Their colour ranges from a blush to strong pink with a cream center and a reverse described as lemony or silvery in young flowers that changes to pink and white in mature petals.

The compact, bushy shrub grows 0.75 to 1.5 meters (2.5 to 5 feet) high and about 1 metre (3.3 ft) wide. The young shoots are crimson with reddish purple new foliage that turns to a glossy slightly blue dark green. 'Violet Carson' is (almost) thornless, rain tolerant, and winter hardy down to -23 °C (USDA zone 6).