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"The chilly mist... drifted over a dirty river that wound between overgrown, rubbish-strewn banks. An immense chimney, relic of a disused mil, reared up, shadowy and ominous. There was no sounds apart from the whisper of the black water and no sign of life apart from a scrawny fox that had slunk down the bank to nose hopefully at some old fish-and-chip wrappings in the tall grass."
— Description of the neighbourhood[src]

Cokeworth was a large town located in the midlands of England,[1] Great Britain. It was a town with several streets of identical brick, terraced houses. It was located near a dirty river, the bank of which was strewn with litter. There was a disused mill with a tall chimney in this town.

History[]

Severus Snape lived in this town, on a street called Spinner's End.[2] Lily and Petunia Evans lived in walking distance from Spinner's End during their childhood, with their mother and father.[3][4]

The Railview Hotel, where Harry Potter and the Dursleys stayed while attempting to outrun Harry's letters from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1991, was located on the outskirts of this city.[5] Vernon Dursley chose to flee to this town when trying to evade the letters from Hogwarts because he felt the town was too distinctly unmagical for the letters to follow them there.[1]

Behind the scenes[]

  • The name is a reference to "Coketown", the fictional industrial centre in which Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times takes place. Commentators believe that Coketown was based on Manchester or Preston, but those real-world cities are in Greater Manchester and Lancashire, while Cokeworth is in the Midlands.
  • On the original script for the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, this town is referred to as "Mill Town".[6]
  • At the press conference for the unveiling of Pottermore, a preview of the website showed new information about the Dursleys from J. K. Rowling. This included the fact that the Evanses lived in Cokeworth,[4] making this the city where Spinner's End was located.

Appearances[]

Notes and references[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Writing by J. K. Rowling: "Cokeworth" at Wizarding World
  2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 2 (Spinner's End)
  3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33 (The Prince's Tale)
  4. 4.0 4.1 Identified in a YouTube video of the Pottermore press conference on June 23, 2011
  5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Chapter 3 (The Letters from No One)
  6. Identified on the Half-Blood Prince script released on the Warner Bros. Awards website
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