Croxteth Hall & Country Park Web site

Hall Farm and Garden opens

Thursday 1 April is the first day of opening for the new 'season' here at Croxteth. Staff in the Hall, Home Farm and Victorian Walled Garden are all busy ensuring everything is ready for Easter Weekend.

Hall rooms are being prepared to display life for the Earl and Countess of Sefton and their servants as it would have been at the turn of last century, during the Edwardian heyday of the estate. Croxteth Hall's curator and heritage volunteers are busy cleaning and dressing the rooms after the winter break to display 'Upstairs Downstairs' life.

A new exhibition 'Eccentric Gadgets and Inventions', kindly sponsored by the Friends of Croxteth Hall & Country Park, will be on show between 1 April and 23 May. 150 unusual and sometimes wacky inventions and gadgets from the Victorian and Edwardian will be on display around the Hall rooms. Be prepared to test your knowledge and see if you can work out what some of the more unusual items were designed for - maybe a lady's gun purse or a self pouring teapot for example. We also have an Easter Egg hunt in the Hall for younger children to enjoy.

Every Sunday and Wednesday afternoons our costumed Heritage Volunteers will be around the Hall rooms on hand to answer questions you may have about the house, the family and servants who lived here, and the way of life in late Victorian and Edwardian times at Croxteth. If you are interested in finding out more about becoming a Heritage Volunteer, please call the Hall on 0151 233 6910.

Don't forget, housed in the peaceful surroundings of our Victorian Walled Garden, is Liverpool City's historic Botanical collection - the largest botanical collection in public ownership in the country. We have 3 national collections housed here - Solenostenum (Coleus), Dracaena (Dragon Plants) and Codiaeum (Crotons)

On the Home farm, as well as the rare breed farm animals which can be seen 'up close', the Farmer always arranges to have young animals in the farmyard at Easter time.

The country park is always looking and sounding good at this time of year. Take a walk around some of the miles of pathways and see trees in fresh bright green new leaves, colourful spring wildflowers like primroses, and lesser celandines will be  brightening up the woodland edges, with bluebells and red campions not far behind. Listen out for birdsong, with birds singing energetically to establish their territory and attract mates. Birds which have overwintered in warmer climates will be returning to our woods - small warblers like Chiff-chaffs and Willow warblers can be heard singing in dense woodland, but look out for swallows returning from spending their winters in Africa. Our earliest sighting here was April 9 a few years ago - will we see an even earlier arrival this year?

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