Wirral Council launches Beatles Across The Mersey tourist trail
A NEW tourist trail celebrating Wirral's connections with the Beatles has been launched by the local council.
Beatles Across The Mersey has been devised in association with the Cavern Club and Beatles author and historian Ray O'Brien and features 29 local sites.
They include Hulme Hall in Port Sunlight, which hosted four Beatles concerts in 1962, including drummer Ringo Starr's very first appearance as a Beatle 50 years ago this month.
Also featured is the site of the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton which, other than the Cavern, is the venue the Beatles played the most times. One of the 27 concerts there attracted their biggest ever audience for a mainland UK show - 4,500 fans in 1962.
Other more obscure Beatles connections are also included on the trail, including Beno Dorn tailors on Grange Road West in Birkenhead, where the band's first ever stage suits were designed in 1962, and a house in Buchanan Road, Seacombe, where the first ever Beatles fan club was launched the same year.
To mark the 50th anniversary of Ringo Starr's first Beatles concert this year's Port Sunlight Summer Festival has been put back a month to August 25 to coincide with International Beatle Week 2012 taking place in Liverpool.
The summer festival attracted 18,000 people last year and the village expects to surpass that total this year with Beatles tribute bands lined up to perform alongside the usual mixture of exhibitors, food and drink stalls and children's entertainment. The event, in the centre of Port Sunlight village, runs from 11am to 5pm.
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Laura Davis
As the Liverpool Post's Arts Editor, Laura covers theatre, music, dance and the visual arts in Merseyside and beyond. Contact her at laura.davis@liverpool.com
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