New Brighton Tower, Wirral, Merseyside

It attracted half a million people in it’s first year. Four lifts took sightseers to the top of the tower at a cost of six old pence, a tanner, to those of us who remember such things. The tower building complex which housed the Tower Ballroom was a focal point for entertainment for both the holiday maker and day trippers. Thousands of visitors would arrive by coach from far and wide including trips from Llandudno and Colwyn Bay, or by ferry from Liverpool, for a day on the beach or a visit to the circus or fair, rounded off with a night out in the Tower Ballroom or the Tivoli Theatre, where Lilly Langtry, ”the best artiste in Vaudeville”, starred in the opening production. I was taken there, as a young 8 or 9 year old, to see Flannegan & Allen with the famous Crazy Gang and I recall Wilson, Keppel & Betty doing their famous sand dance, shuffling along on what appeared to be sand sprinkled on paper. The atmosphere was fantastic, and the audience were loud and very enthusiastic.

In those days you could buy a quarter pound of boiled sweets in “Woollies” for 2 old pennies, 5 pence today was worth 12 old pennies, a shilling, then. The shop assistant would use a scoop to put the sweets on the scales until they were happy with the weight, then pour them into a paper bag. You could buy a huge 1 penny “Gobstopper” which you could suck for an hour and barely get through the first couple of colours, so you would wrap it up and put it in your pocket until later. Not very hygienic by today’s standards!

Anyway, getting back to the Tower, unlike Blackpool Tower, it had a lavish gothic base as if sat on top of a stately home. It remained popular until world war one when the nation stopped partying so much and the tower was shut down temporarily. Sadly, during the shut down the metalwork was neglected and became rusty, so when the war was over in 1919 it failed to be suitable for public use. Faced with a massive bill for restoring it the owners decided to pull the tower down and rely on the income from the ballroom and gardens.

The ballroom lasted as a top concert venue until fire gutted it in the 60s, shortly after The Beatles played there, and many years after my mother had sung there with the resident band, the early equivalent of today’s Karaoke I suppose.

The fire, the fourth that the tower had suffered, started on Saturday 5th. April 1969. The call was received at Wallasey Fire Station just after 5am in the morning, where by now I was employed as a full time Fireman. The manager and staff had left the building the night before about 8-30pm. after a routine check, the stage area was not included in their check! A police constable discovered the fire in the stage area in the west wing of the tower early next morning.

I arrived, on one of the first fire appliances, to find the tower burning vigorously and out of control. The Station Officer, Walter Peach, had a crew at the rear of the tower setting up to start tackling the fire when an instinct told him to evacuate that area and head up a slope to higher ground. No sooner had the crew reached the top when a huge section of the wall collapsed and crashed down on the area where they had been working. They would have undoubtedly have been crushed to death had they not moved. Walter could not say what caused him to give the life saving order, it remains a mystery to this day.

After the collapse, Walter sent a radio message to make pumps ten and turntable ladders two. By this time the whole of the external wall was crumbling and falling down. Another radio message was sent to make turntable ladders four. The collapse of the wall exposed the ballroom and theatre to the open air allowing flames to reach other parts of the building. Parts of the roof began to fall in. Oxygen and acetylene cylinders exploded on the fifth floor but luckily no-one was hurt in the blasts.

The boating lake had been drained making the provision of water difficult. More fire appliances were called to form water relays from nearby Marine Lake. A total of 25 pumps and 4 turntable ladders were used to contain the fire.

The Chief Officer, Ernest Buschenfeld, shouted an order, “I don’t want any heroes, let it burn”. The lives of his men were more important than bricks and mortar.

The once magnificent New Brighton Tower was lost forever.