Louise Bryning
Mirador Arts
A museum dedicated to British jukeboxes produced in Blackpool and Lytham St Annes opened exclusively as part of a series of events celebrating Fifties and Sixties culture.
The Ditchburn Jukebox Museum in St Annes opened for three days to welcome people involved with Jukebox:The Teenage Revolution project, supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players; the Granada Foundation and Garfield Weston Foundation.
The Museum features a selection of jukeboxes made by Ditchburn Equipment Ltd of Lytham St Annes, one of the UK’s first manufacturers of jukeboxes.
Visitors were treated to a talk by Museum founder and owner, Karl Dawson, who bought his first Ditchburn Music Maker jukebox in 2017 and who plans to open the Museum and coffee bar to the public next May.
Since setting up a Facebook page and website dedicated to Ditchburn’s, Karl has been inundated with information and photographs from people who worked at the factory or who have fond memories of playing jukeboxes during their teenage years in the Fifties and Sixties.
The first jukeboxes to be made in the area were produced at Hawtin’s Novelty Company in Blackpool in 1946. However, when Hawtin’s decided jukeboxes weren’t going to take off, they sold that side of their business to Geoffrey Norman Ditchburn who moved production to Lytham St Annes in 1952 and the rest, as they say, is history.
“Ditchburn’s put rock and roll on the UK map,” said Karl. “In its early days, the BBC wouldn’t play popular music so when teenagers wanted to listen to music, they always had to find a jukebox in a coffee bar somewhere.”
It was Ditchburn staff who selected the records for the jukeboxes which were from the American charts initially.
The history of jukebox production on the Lancashire coast and of teenage culture in the Fifties and Sixties is being celebrated by Jukebox: The Teenage Revolution, a project organised by Lancashire-based arts and heritage charity, Mirador and Lancaster University Library.
If you have memories of being a teenager in the Fifties and Sixties or photographs from that era, please contact Mirador at: https://miradorarts.co.uk/get-in-touch/