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Fran, Carole, Jane and Hazel at the Town Hall

Paul McCartney’s return to his home city for the Liverpool Sound Concert at Anfield is one of the highlights of Capital of Culture year, but for sheer frenzy it’s unlikely to match the July day in 1964 when The Beatles returned to Liverpool for the northern premier of A Hard Day’s Night.

Thousands of people lined the streets outside the Town Hall on Friday, 10 July, 1964, for The Beatles appearance on the balcony, a reception that the Liverpool Daily Post called ‘the night of a thousand screams’.

For four Liverpool schoolgirls the day was to be one of the most memorable of their lives.

The girls in 1964

Carole Peate, with her friends Jane, Hazel and Fran, missed school for the day to see the fab four’s homecoming, but they were to come unstuck when a picture of them outside the Town Hall appeared in the Liverpool Echo.

They had left home carrying bags of clothes, changed out of their school uniforms, hiding them in a bush, and then caught the bus in to Liverpool in order to claim their spot on Castle Street, “We got there about 9 o’clock,” says Carole.

“Initially we sat on the Town Hall step and the mayor arrived and he passed us and then started talking to us.”

“Other people started to arrive around about one or two o’clock.

Caught on camera

Carole had made a prop especially for the occasion, modifying a roll of paper that had once been used as the destination board for the front of a bus, to create a homemade banner reading ‘Welcome home lads’.

As the crowds grew the girls had to jostle for position on the left hand side of the Town Hall, “We were allowed to stand at the front of the barrier,” Carole recalls.

“People tried to push us back but we said ‘We’ve been here all day’.

“We didn’t actually see The Beatles arrive.

“The first time we saw them was when they were on the balcony.”

At the front of the crowd the girls were snapped by different photographers, including as it turned out, one from the Liverpool Echo.

When a photograph of them posing with their banner appeared on the front page of the paper the game was up.

““When we got back to school we thought we’d got away with it, until we got called in to the Deputy Head’s office,” says Carole.

“We had loads of pictures taken but that was the only one we ever saw.”

McCartney memories

Where you at the Town Hall in 1964?

Did you see The Beatles play in Liverpool or Sir Paul McCartney's dockland concerts since?

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