Heritage campaigners called Wednesday for tourist landmarks in Liverpool linked to the world's most famous band, the Beatles, to be better protected.

London-based SAVE Britain's Heritage said fears were growing for a series of locations associated with the group in their birthplace city.

"The city's Cavern Club, where the band played almost 300 times, has announced its closure until further notice, saying COVID-19 restrictions currently make opening impossible," said SAVE.

It added the closure has just been announced of a 90 year old TSB bank branch on the corner of Penny Lane, whose manager was immortalized by Paul McCartney's 1967 song "Penny Lane" lyrics as the man who 'never wears a mac in the pouring rain -- very strange'.

Opposite the bank, and also mentioned in the U.S. Number One hit song, stands the former tram 'shelter in the middle of the roundabout', where the teenaged Beatles would meet on their way to and from school, and McCartney wrote about the 'pretty nurse selling poppies from a tray'.

A failed project to convert the Penny Lane tram shelter into a Sergeant Pepper Bistro means it currently lies empty and forlorn.

SAVE has called on the government to encompass a review of listing protection and potential investment strategies for all Liverpool's Beatles landmarks, in the light of ongoing threats to Beatles heritage and the COVID-19 related collapse in the city's international tourism.

"The Beatles are probably the most powerful British cultural phenomenon of the 20th century, and it is 'unimaginable' that their birthplaces should remain without legal protection 80 years after Lennon's birth, and 40 years after his tragic death," said Marcus Binney, executive president of SAVE.

The heritage group use the title of one of the Beatles' hit songs, Help! to highlight its new campaign. 

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