time he performed the piece. In 1900 he conducted Tchaikovsky's Pathétique symphony at New Brighton Tower. The interior of the ballroom was completely destroyed by fire in 1956, but it was restored in its original style and reopened two years later. On 10 November 1961, The Beatles played for an audience of 4,000 people at the New Brighton Tower Ballroom as the headline act of a five-and-a-half-hour concert named Operation Big Beat. Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Remo Four and Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes also performed at the concert. The Beatles played at the venue 27 times, commemorated in a blue plaque erected in New Brighton in 2011. The only British venue The Beatles played at more often was the Cavern Club. Little Richard and the Rolling Stones also performed at the Tower Building. Tower Theatre On 30 May 1898 the Tower Theatre was opened, sited between the legs of the tower. Capable of accommodating an audience of 2,500, it was the largest theatre in England outside London. Each season at the theatre was different; some years it would show a play or an opera, others it would focus on variety acts such as magicians, comedians and lion tamer Mademoiselle Marguerite, with her seven lions. Wrestling was hosted at the theatre as early as 1903, and had become a weekly event by 1937. When the Americans occupied the site during the Second World War, they used the Tower Theatre to show their own roadshows to the troops. Grounds The tower's grounds were enclosed by iron railings, and throughout the gardens the roads and paths were illuminated with 30,000 red, white and green fairy lights at night. The tower's grounds had a band stand, a dancing platform, a fountain, seal pond and tennis courts. The gardens were separated into wooded areas, rockeries and flower beds. There was a lake in the grounds, which had a water chute and gondolas with Venetian gondoliers. There were also a number of venues providing refreshments, including a Japanese restaurant that could cater for up to 700 people, the Parisian Tea Garden, the Rock Point Castle restaurant, which could accommodate 400 people, and an Algerian café. At the grounds of the tower there was a large permanent funfair, with rides including Figure of Eight, Wall of Death, Donkey Derby, The Himalayan Switchback Railway and The Caterpillar. To give easy access from