Calderstones Park

Calderstones Park is a public park in the Allerton area of Liverpool, England, about 4 miles (6 km) south-east of the city centre. The 126 acres (0.51 km2) park is mainly a family park. Within it there are a variety of attractions including a playground, a botanical garden and places of historical interest. There is a lake in the park with geese and ducks, and the Calderstones Mansion House, which features a café and a children's play area.

1. Features


1. = The Calderstones =

The Calderstones are six neolithic sandstone monoliths that formed part of a burial monument 4,000 years ago. They are a scheduled monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The nearby Robin Hood's Stone was originally also one of the Calderstones, and has been relocated.

1. = Calderstones House =

The mansion house was built in 1828 for Joseph Need Walker. The house is of Georgian style, though it has been subject to alterations over the years, and was used as council offices for some decades until 2012. The extensive stables and coachhouse remain at the rear of the house. Since c.2013, the house has been the headquarters of The Reader, a national charity which promotes reading and literature. The charity converted an outbuilding into a children's attraction called the Storybarn.

1. = The Allerton Oak =

One of the park's two most ancient features, estimated at 1,000 years old, is an oak tree. According to legend, the ancient local Hundred Court sat beneath its branches. Its dilapidated state is said to be due to the explosion of the gunpowder ship Lottie Sleigh over three miles away on the River Mersey in 1864. It is dependent upon a number of props that hold it up. Acorns and leaves from the oak were sent to soldiers by their families during World War II, such was the reputation of this tree. The tree was named England's 'tree of the year' in 2019 by the Woodland Trust.

1. = Botanical garden =

After World War II, Percy Conn, the new Superintendent of Liverpool Parks, had the vision to recreate the Liverpool Botanic Garden of William Roscoe and John Shepherd from the Mount Pleasant days, in the Harthill Estate grounds at Calderstones Park. This work was started in 1951 and completed in 1964, when the set of 16 connected glasshouses was formally opened. Calderstones botanical garden contained almost 4,000 species of plants brought from all over the world by merchants and other travellers. As funding was very tight post-war, low-grade spruce, rather than teak, was used to build the glasshouses, and by 1979 they had reached the end of their useful lives, but no money was available to rebuild them. The botanical importance of the park encouraged further horticultural improvements, such as the creation of a Japanese garden by park apprentices in 1969, and the introduction of a 'bog garden' linked to the artificial lake. In 1984 the glasshouses were closed and the plants transported to the Liverpool City nursery at Garston, where they remained for the next 23 years. Some of the plants were occasionally seen at Southport Flower Shows over this period. In 2007/2008 a third of the plants were re-housed in four glasshouses within Croxteth Hall's walled gardens, when Garston Nursery was closed as a consequence of the outsourcing of Liverpool's park & garden maintenance work.

1. = Nature reserve =

The dry nature reserve, created on the site of a council works depot, was featured on the BBC 2 programme Gardeners' World on 15 March 2024.

1. Tennis tournament

Set in the park, the Liverpool International Tennis Tournament began in 2002 (with the women's event beginning in 2006) and has attracted many well known tennis stars such as Martina Navratilova, Ivan Ljubičić and David Ferrer. In 2008 the tournament attracted over 2,500 spectators.

1. See also

List of parks and open spaces in Merseyside

1. References

"Calderstones Park". Megalithic Portal.

1. External links

Official website The Calderstones – personal website, archived in 2004 Fungi in Calderstones park – North West Fungus Group

Nearby Places View Menu

Calderstones House

Calderstones House, Calderstones Park, Liverpool, England, is a 19th-century mansion house which is now at the centre of a public park. The house was built in the Allerton suburb in 1828 for Joseph Need Walker, a lead shot manufacturer. It is a 'restrained neo-classical' ashlar mansion of three floors, with a separate and extensive stableyard and coach-house which was originally set in 93 acres (38 hectares) of parkland. In 1875, the house and estate were acquired by Charles MacIver, co-founder of Cunard Line, for £52,000. In 1902, the MacIver family bequeathed the estate to Liverpool Corporation, who transformed it into a public park. They soon acquired the adjoining estate of Harthill and established the current 126 acre (51 hectares) park. The Grade II listed building became the offices of the Liverpool Corporation's Parks and Gardens department, and in the 1940s part of the house was transformed into a self-contained flat for the Assistant Head Gardener. The 1940s also saw a neo art-deco open-air theatre constructed at the back of the house, designed by Sir Lancelot Keay. For most of the 20th century, the mansion housed a tea-room and café and was used for wedding receptions, parties and other functions. In the 1970s the house became council offices, and it remained in that use until 2012, when the council placed the house on the market. The Reader, a national charity centred around literature and shared reading, was given preferred bidder status in January 2013. They have a licence agreement to use the buildings for meetings, events and activities, and have a 125-year lease. In January 2017, The Reader began redevelopment work to restore the house, having secured funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Liverpool City Council and independent funders. The redevelopment was completed in Autumn 2019, when it reopened as The Reader's International Centre for Shared Reading—the world's first public building dedicated to literature and wellbeing. An outbuilding was converted into a children's attraction called the Storybarn, featuring an ice cream parlour. The redevelopment included the restoration and preservation of the Neolithic Calder Stones, which give the local area its name. The Calder Stones now form part of The Calderstones Story, an interactive, permanent exhibition at Calderstones House that tells 5,000 years of local history.

Landmark Museum

Allerton Oak

The Allerton Oak is an Irish oak tree in Calderstones Park in Liverpool, England. It is thought to be around 1,000 years old and is described as the oldest oak in North West England. It is reputed to have been the setting for a medieval hundred court and said to have been damaged in an 1864 gunpowder explosion. The tree won the 2019 English Tree of the Year competition and had been entered into the 2020 European Tree of the Year competition.

Landmark Park

Calderstones (Liverpool ward)

Calderstones ward is an electoral district of Liverpool City Council within the Liverpool Garston Parliamentary constituency. The ward was created for the elections held on 4 May 2023 following a 2022 review by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England, which decided that the previous 30 wards each represented by three Councillors should be replaced by 64 wards represented by 85 councillors with varying representation by one, two or three councillors per ward. The Calderstones ward was created as a single-member ward from the eastern half of the former Church ward with a small section of the former Woolton ward. The ward boundaries follow Queens Drive, Woolton Road, Aldbourne Avenue, Beaconsfield Road, Yew Tree Road and Allerton Road. The ward is named for and includes Calderstones Park.

Government Neighbourhood

Carleton House Preparatory School

Carleton House is a Catholic private preparatory school in Liverpool, England, that educates children from the ages of 3–11. It is a member of the Independent Schools Association and is overseen by the Independent Schools Inspectorate.

School