Tower Ballroom, New Brighton: the Beatles Site and Plaque

The Tower Ballroom stood in New Brighton, Wallasey, across the Mersey from Liverpool. Between 1961 and 1963 the Beatles played it 27 times, more than any other UK venue apart from the Cavern Club. Fire destroyed the building on 5 April 1969, and houses and park land now cover the site. A blue plaque on Tower Promenade has marked it since 2011.

A ballroom that outlived its tower

When New Brighton Tower opened on 4 June 1898 it was 173 metres (567 feet) tall. The steel tower was taken down between 1919 and 1921, but the four-storey red-brick building at its foot stayed open, and the Tower Ballroom was inside it. The ballroom had a sprung floor and a band stage. It had already been through one fire, in 1956, and was restored afterwards.

27 nights on the Wirral

The Beatles first played the Tower Ballroom on 10 November 1961, on a big-beat package night called Operation Big Beat. They came back 26 more times, the last in 1963. Only the Cavern Club had them more often anywhere in Britain.

The best-known of those nights was 12 October 1962. That evening Brian Epstein's NEMS promoted Little Richard, with twelve acts on a bill that ran about five and a half hours, and the Beatles were in the support slot. It was their 23rd show at the ballroom. Billy Preston played organ in Little Richard's band that night.

The 1969 fire and what replaced it

The ballroom burned again on Saturday 5 April 1969. Firefighters used 25 pumps and four turntable ladders, but the walls began to collapse and the building was lost. Nobody has established what caused the fire. The remains were cleared, and a developer later put up the River View Park housing estate on the tower grounds, leaving the rest of the land for recreation.

The plaque on Tower Promenade

A blue plaque went up on Tower Promenade in 2011, on the seafront beside the old tower grounds. It says only that the Beatles played the Tower Ballroom 27 times between 1961 and 1963. It is outdoors on a public promenade, and there is nothing else left of the ballroom to see.

Two other Wirral venues from the early years still stand. The Beatles played the Grosvenor Ballroom in nearby Liscard in 1960 and 1961. Litherland Town Hall, the scene of their "Direct from Hamburg" night, is on the Liverpool side of the river.