Liverpool park to benefit from Queen's legacy fund

An historic Liverpool country park will be the first place to receive funding from the Queen Elizabeth Trust, a memorial project set up to honour the legacy of the late Queen.

£2m will fund the restoration of Croxteth country park's community garden, a natural amphitheatre and a bike track.

Chair of the Trust, Sir Damon Buffini, said "the late Queen loved Merseyside, she loved the people, so we thought it was appropriate" that the area was the first to benefit.

Users of the park welcomed the announcement, with one mum telling the BBC: "It's got an amazing energy, and it definitely needs promoting more".

Croxteth Park is the former country estate and ancestral home of the Earls of Sefton, and passed to the council's care in the early 1970s. The authority has long had ambitious plans for the estate, but in 2022 revealed it cost £1m per year to maintain.

The 550 acre site includes woodland, parkland, gardens and a base for students at Myerscough college, where Liverpool council cabinet member Dan Barrington studied as a teenager.

He said: "I spent a lot of time physically out in the walled garden getting my hands dirty working - it's a really special place".

He added the investment would help Croxteth Park realise its potential: "It's a country park in a city, with a stately home. It needs a lot of resource, this is that big stepping stone, the investment that this place needs".

Students currently studying horticulture at Myerscough College said the investment would protect the long term future of a place they loved.

Lewis said he had fond memories of visiting the park as a child and was now proud to be learning more about its flora and fauna.

Olly said the funding would mean Croxteth Park could continue to be a "safe space for kids and families for generations to come".

Erin, a mature student at the college said it was "great to see investment in horticulture in the north", while fellow student Jackie added: "It can only be a good thing to help people who love gardens, it might open a door for people that may have been bolted shut - it's going to be amazing".

Bee keeper Andrea Ku's bees make honey from the flowers and plants on the estate. She said: "Liverpool's parks were a front runner historically. This is really exciting, an amphitheatre, the gardens - I can't wait to see what's going to happen."

During her Golden Jubilee visit to Liverpool in 2002, Queen Elizabeth described Merseyside as "one of the most distinctive and energetic parts of the United Kingdom" and reflected on Liverpool's experience of showing how communities can come together.

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