About Sefton Park
A lovers' place of tryst in Victorian times, with a manifestation on St Valentine's Day
attached to a tragic story of legend, the Iron Bridge spans a water-course that lulls.
Looking down, and out into Constable beside the Fairy Glen, the scene broken only -
and then stealing you back - by the gentle passage from pools over rocks that joins the
pond-green truckle of the Jordan. A course that threads with gentle play, unheralded
at the Mersey shore.
Out from the railing-enclosed idyll of Fairy Glen, where to look back holds you fast
upon a fairy tale page, with the leavening-green wrought iron of the bridge curling at
the margins. The trees a canopy holed by sunlight glinting in showers below: the path
beside the still, winding brook. Along the causeway between bloom and bush and
high-nettled tangles and twists, the still winding brook slows your step. Past
riverbank tailed-runners that are going no place in a rush and dry basking terrapins
doing much the same.
Skittish squirrels that can't see in front of their noses take peanuts from your fingers,
wide-eyed. Alert to bigger birds, blue tits flit to your out-stretched palm and perch
momentarily for their pick. A pair of jays that are not such a rare sight this year, wary
of their bullying magpie cousins, flash blue and pink in the trees; they have a taste for
peanuts too. As do all the birds that can be seen only when tempted down from the
blinking green arbour. So too the pigeons. Rooks, mallards, doves, coots,
moorhens and geese. Surrendering to the splendour and 'life in harmony' of our local
civic pride, it was for two north Liverpool friends of mine their first ever visit to
Sefton Park.
In a statue-slow march passing us on one side of the brook, and broadly stretching a
way around the park's two hundred acres, a cover of high-limbed tall Birch and Elm.
Not much good for climbing unaided but with clearance between each for a clear run
at the game of chase. Dogs unleashed and pin-balling can ever and only get close to
these wizards of the trees. Chasing a ball of plume-tail and fur that runs up
trees…will always have him returning slack-jawed to his master.
Past gnarled fingers of trees along pathways in bloom suffusing sunlight with coos
and caws, cackle and song. This year's a different thing.
With the park being re-sculpted, invigorated and renewed, not much in the shape and
colour of new life was to be seen last year. With the flora trimmed back, the fauna
fell off too. Looking lost in transition and a little sorry for itself, the essential work on
the park withered the lake and its life. A pair of swans that nurtured young on the
lake's island for some, or all, of the previous six or seven seasons, found a new albeit
temporary home.
Since the departure from the lake of all other wintering birds - swans, geese, tufted
ducks and more, including the interloping gulls that performed mid-air feats for a
mid-air snack - those same swans nested again on the lake's island. Hatching six
blue-blooded, very cosseted cygnets.
After negotiating the stepping stones and passing by the swans island, the 'gorgeous'
sweep of the lake comes into view for my friends. A little further along and we're
soon looking out at something resembling a cartoon DONALD, with its bill rising from
the water, orange\yellow like its upturned, flippered feet. There was nothing
animated about this poor Pekin duck; its identical white mate close by, worrying
itself in circles '…its neck was snapped in the jaws of a dog',said a seated lady
forlornly; with discarded rolled up bits of bread at her feet.
What once amused as I strolled nonchalantly beside the lake now held me
nonplussed. There was nothing much a dog owner could do, I suppose, once their
unleashed best friend was set upon the water. And to witness the
commotion a paddling and panting dog caused amongst the birds, especially the
peeved irritation of the mallards, was often not half as entertaining as the efforts of
their owners in trying to rescue not just the situation but their own composure.
And now I realise why playtime for some can be just a little too rough for others –
both duck and 'dog-handler'. What their flustered and shame-faced manner often
betrayed at such times was not the in-control, responsible dog-owning citizen of near
genteel respectability, ha! Well, serves them right! Just keep it tethered around the
birds.
The lake's mere few feet of depth was exposed last year when work in the park saw
the water source largely dry up. And from where once as a child a boat may be hired,
that could send you to an unfathomable watery grave should a leak spring or a
shark capsize it, now there's a new-built coffee-shop kiosk, with seating closer
to the lakeside.
Carved-out like a miniature Scottish loch, and bounded and fringed by
sturdy and high blown tree-green, the lake is perfectly set off and inviting from above.
Unless, of course, you're up there with wings which aren't your own.
Walking an arc lakeside around its southernmost and widest part, the mallards and
coots - and a singular white Pekin - squat or perch as nonchalant as would once the
licensed anglers. Who will once again, I expect, when the restocking serves up a
sizeable catch.
So what the heron is doing here again I can only but guess, visible as he is most
mornings. If our heron is not eating tiddlers, as one of my friends suggests, then
could it be that some enthusiast has stocked the lake from another source with god-
knows what size of fish? Or has the Sefton Park heron had a belly full elsewhere and
is enjoying some quality time lakeside while human traffic is off-peak? With the
morning clerical coot lined up one-legged around the rim of the lake, without sermon
and a flock unto themselves, still, majesty belongs with the heron. I tilt my hat to
both.
Early morning when people traffic is slow the family of swans have been seen to
waddle their way up and past the stepping stones - from where the lake's second
source runs around - to a smaller more secluded body of water. So when they've
gone missing that's where they've been. A narrowing source traceable west
through the parkland where tented and outdoor events are held. At each end of the
gentle-wooded eyot (upon which we are planning to build our summerhouse) are two
fountain geysers, original features of the Victorian park.
Stubborn, true and to the manner born, besides an intermittent spouting of monsoon
shower a coot builds its island manor. The sight of which loosens from myself a
primal urge to go live in a tree-house. For a time. True-to-itself and heedless of
others the white-billed, ball-like black water-fowl makes itself at home when putting
its foot up. Upon one leg it becomes cartoon.
The morning amblers, dog-walkers and on-the-hoof creature comforters are the park's
human crucible. Drawn from diversity they coalesce. What does become urban folk
when we escape and sheave into our microcosm of countryside?
The civilising influence of being at one again with nature seems paradoxical. Such
easy courtesies as a nod or a 'morning!' would be curious - lost in
the bustle and anonymity of life - outside of the park. (A latent desire to escape back
into the countryside from our urban working life is perhaps apparent in the traditional
style of our pubs, no less?)
The transcendent nature of our own true existence is weighed down and rooted in a
shallow material world. Yet with little resistance to the winds of fashion. Where
reality is fixed and outlook grounded to the flat horizon. And yet small irony that
those who are at one with, and rooted deep into their earth, more readily transcend
their reality. And for the nature-loving human park life, perspective is everything.
Sharing the morning park and the time of day, a certain gentleman with his white
Patterdale\Jack Russell cross (fit as the proverbial from a once a day meal-time) is
just one familiar and friendly face. Known to all, with a ball for the dog and carrier
bags for dirt. Essential to the morning constitution of this stalwart and his friend
include some gentle miles about the park.
A slow amble around the lake for the master of the Yorkshire terrier - as big as a mop
head that just skims the ground. Brazen and fearless with a too-human face; too big
for its bones a yap, that starts.
While at leisure and free to play with your thoughts, the great expansive park solitude
longingly pesters and pulls at your elbows, guiding you back. Did we all have a place
in our childhood that nostalgia called-home!? Or that just recalled our easiest and
happiest time!? Salad days and oyster years…
Feelings conjured from fragmented images that just a scent captures. Scenes playing
in time-lapse but held fast in a spell that transports us through branches and leaves,
whistles and cries; the love that is yours - preserving innocence - back and forth
through all of your years? Schooldays. (Glan Alyn Boarding School-days were mine.
My place; my time if I but knew it then. Six years in Wales that went out like a
flame, re-lit and dancing on days as these.)
Summer colours plucked from Rho bushes, gathered in a bunch for mummy.
Her little brother stays blossoming pink, relieved as the verdure hides his blushes.
The young toes twinkle and scamper across the stretches of wooded grassland; the
enclosed and busy playground invites – but not without mummy! Golf-green lawns
between high hedges and orchards…. With the longed for summer holidays that took
forever to arrive and will go on and on until…the kids are bigger.
Beside a willow tree dripping at the waterside, and with morning sun rising behind, a
rainbow arches and shimmers in the spray of the fountain. Between these two water
features is another: more basking terrapins. Beneath the original island bandstand
brought back to life, a lone swan conducts herself while looking loosely knotted.
Towards the refurbished and extended Aviary Café, whereupon the fountain and
statue that is Sefton Park's Eros. Cast from the world famous original in Piccadilly
Circus, winged and almost naked in aluminium and bronze. Lovingly, painstakingly
restored inch by inch.
From here where divergent parkways meet, who that have flowed through the park
will soon ebb away, directly or in their stride.
The winding, wooded path leading back to Fairy Glen courts privacy for easy-talking
friends and sweethearts. Caught by early evening chatter from branches belonging
not to the flighty, but a flock of young adults. Perched and hidden upon the
accommodating bean-cushion boughs of a tree more suited to Brobdingnag, and
standing opposite, yet belonging inside, the Palm House.
An imposing, three tiered dome of glass housing exotic plants and greenery; with
statues of the celebrated and revered standing guard around the gravel setting of the
house. The Palm House is not just symbolic to the park but emblematic of the civic
grandeur, style and confidence, not to mention philanthropy, of Victorian England's
urban centres: Liverpool. And her own Sefton Park.
Back at their waiting mother's car beside the Iron Bridge, my companions agree how
happy they are to have spent the first day of their school holidays with their new
friend. And when can they again visit Sefton Park.
By D. Frederick
