Litherland Town Hall and the Beatles' Night of 27 December 1960

Litherland Town Hall on Hatton Hill Road, Litherland, north of Liverpool, is where the Beatles played on 27 December 1960, billed as "Direct from Hamburg". The crowd's reaction that night is often described as the start of Beatlemania. The 1940s building still stands and has been a health centre since 2009. There is no Beatles plaque.

A late booking after Hamburg

The Beatles came home from their first Hamburg season in December 1960. The DJ Bob Wooler talked the promoter Brian Kelly, who ran dances under the Beekay name, into adding them to his Litherland Town Hall bill for 27 December. The booking came so late that the posters were overlaid with a strip reading "Direct from Hamburg", and the Liverpool Echo advert used the same line. Many people in the hall took them for a German group.

Stuart Sutcliffe had stayed in Germany, so Chas Newby played bass alongside John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best. One account gives the fee as £6.

What happened in the ballroom

When the set started, the dancers stopped and pressed towards the stage. Estimates of the crowd run from over 1,000 to 1,500. The historian Mark Lewisohn has called the night the beginning of Beatlemania, and that label has stuck. McCartney later recalled trying the spoken section of Are You Lonesome Tonight? and giving it up after that night.

Kelly booked them again quickly. Wikipedia counts 20 Beatles shows at the town hall in all, the last in November 1961. Other writers count Kelly's follow-up bookings across all his venues, which gives larger numbers, so figures vary depending on what is being counted.

The building, then and now

Gerald de Courcy Fraser designed the town hall for Litherland Urban District Council. It is a symmetrical red-brick building in an Italianate style, begun in 1939 at a cost of £20,000 and opened in February 1941, with an assembly hall and stage inside.

Since 2009 it has been Litherland Town Hall Health Centre, with GP and dental practices, a walk-in centre and an X-ray department. Nothing on the building refers to the Beatles. In December 2009 the Liverpool Echo reported that a proposed Beatles plaque had been turned down on the grounds that it would be too popular. Anyone coming to see the site is looking at a working clinic, and the view is from Hatton Hill Road.

The Beatles' earlier Liverpool haunts are in the city centre, including the Jacaranda and the Cavern Club. Pete Best's family club, the Casbah, is in West Derby.