A quiet walk in the low winter sun on the first day of 2017. My feet, in charge as ever, take me in the opposite direction to my usual tendencies and out into the suburbs, arriving at the perfect vision of an England from a hundred years ago that is All Hallows church.
It’s mid afternoon as you can see. Having slept most of the morning.
Walking along the sandstone walled lane.
Turning into Calderstones Park.
The sun low in the sky directly behind me.
A beautiful afternoon in a place I hardly came to during 2016.
The great border completely bare and died back now.
And the Mansion House soon to go on site apparently.
The Reader Organisation doing a good job of reviving and reusing several of the buildings in the park. They run a good café here too. So I get my lunch and go for a sit and a read somewhere special.
Not just any bench.
My bench, bought as a birthday present sixteen years ago by Sarah.
Today I sit here and continue reading this biography of Harry Nilsson.
Singing his songs quietly (I hope?) to myself as I get up and walk around the English Garden where Harry’s friend John Lennon would go when he’d bunk off school.
“Sitting in an English Garden waiting for the sun…”
Then to the Calderstones themselves.
Stones from a Neolithic ‘passage grave’ built over 4,000 years ago.
Containing spiral art similar to other passage grave sites in North Wales and Northern Ireland.
These facts from a book in my Liverpool books collection ‘The Calderstones: A prehistoric tomb in Liverpool’ by the Merseyside Archaeological Society.
A treasure then. And displayed in a plastic greenhouse? Well at least we have them. And maybe there are plans, just a thought?
Back through the English Garden to the Japanese Garden.
And though the sun is still shining…
The afternoon is turning cold.
So I decide to walk home.
Still singing along with Harry Nilsson, as I have done most of my life, on this quiet New Year’s Day.
I wasn’t aware test there were Neolithic remains in the Liverpool area Spiral designs can be seen on standing stones in the west of Scotland.
Hi Robert, well as you can see the treasure is not exactly treasured. It was apparently still an intact tomb until the 1830s, when it was broken up and some bits went who knows where. Then the stones we do have spent the first half of the 20th Century as a decorative stone circle at the front entrance to the park. Nearby roads as they were developed were given nonsense historical names like ‘Druidsville’ and ‘Druid’s Cross.’ Then eventually they were awarded the plastic home where they now sit. By no means grand but the most respect they’ve had since the early 1830s!
I have just realised Ronnie, that we saw you right at the entrance, at least all I saw was your camera.. my husband recognised your photograph. The park was busier than we had ever seen it. Have you ever been to Princes Park? it’s neglected but one of my favourites and it was a place of healing for Helen Forrester of “Twopence to Cross the Mersey” fame
Amazing history! And the photos spot on!