When millions of viewers tuned into Tyrone and Molly’s wedding on Coronation Street this week, they probably did not notice anything amiss with the beautiful 14th-century church. The rector was not among them.

It was not the absurd storyline that so incensed the Rev James Milnes, of St Mary’s Church, Nether Alderley, Cheshire. Nor was it the ornate horse-drawn carriage, the dry-ice machine used to create atmosphere or even the harpist in the nave.

The clergyman was furious that the show’s producers had decided to hide the solid brass cross that formed the centrepiece of the altar for fear that it would cause offence to viewers.

Denouncing the decision to hide the cross behind a garish candelabra and artificial flowers, Mr Milnes wrote in his monthly parish magazine that Granada Television had “emptied the church of the very thing that makes it a church”.

Condemning the “political correctness” which demands that the central symbol of the Anglican faith be obscured, he said that the only way to answer this “point of shame” was to take bold action. Mr Milnes, 29, has pledged to spend the £4,600 that Granada paid for the privilege of using the sandstone church overlooking the Cheshire plains on buying a larger, silver cross for the altar.

He wrote: “How can people think it offensive to see a cross in a church, in the same way as you would normally see the Koran in a mosque or the Torah in a synagogue? That is the emblem of this faith.

“This has a resonance around the country. It plays into who we are as a nation because I do not think we have a clear idea as English people. We do not really know where we are going.

“There is constant attrition to our way of life. You can’t say this or you can’t say that for fear of offending. Who can we possibly be offending?”

This week Coronation Street viewers saw Tyrone Dobbs, played by Alan Halsall, arriving late for his wedding with Molly Compton, played by Vicky Binns, because he had been arrested in connection with one of his Auntie Pam’s scams.

The drama behind the scenes took place during shooting in November when producers requested that the altar cross be removed “because when the footage airs in mid-January they did not want to offend anyone”.

On being told that it was a permanent fixture, the crew decided to hide it.

In the magazine, Mr Milnes wrote: “The result was an obscuring of the offending article — the cross. Without the Cross there would be no Church. Our saviour opened wide his arms for us on the Cross and yet in 2008-09 the Church is compliant in obscuring it. They wanted to film a wedding in a quintessentially English church and then empty it of the very thing that makes it a church. I want us to say that obscuring the cross is a disgrace.”

A Granada spokeswoman said yesterday: “We are looking into how and why this happened. As the Rev Milnes rightly says, we chose the church because the characters wanted a traditional religious church wedding. Covering up the the cross was an error and we apologise for any upset.”

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