Calderstones House, Calderstones Park,

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

, 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 Shot is a collective term for small spheres or pellets, often made of lead. These have been projected from slings since ancient times and were the original projectiles for shotguns and are still fired primarily from shotguns and grenade launch ...

manufacturer. It is a 'restrained neo-classical'

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

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

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, 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 In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

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 The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

Liverpool City Council Liverpool City Council is the Local government in England, local authority for the City status in the United Kingdom, city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. Liverpool has had a local authority since 1207, which has been reformed on numerous ...

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 The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

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.

References

{{Buildings and structures in Liverpool, state=collapsed Grade II listed buildings in Liverpool