Sefton Park Palm House

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 05/06/2018

SJ 3787 37/11

SEFTON PARK, L17 Sefton Park Palm House

(Formerly listed as Palm House, SEFTON PARK)

12.07.66.

GV II* Palm House, built in 1896, designed by Mackenzie and Moncur. It is octagonal in plan. It has an iron frame on a granite base, with totally glazed openings. It appears as a sequence of three domical roofs, one above the other, including a clerestorey and lantern with a ball finial. The side elevations are of six bays with three round-arched lights and colonnettes to each bay, and ornamental cresting above. There are entrances to the north, south-east and west with barrel-vaulted porches that are enclosed at the sides and have ornamental gates, some with animals or birds. There are statues at each angle by Léon-Joseph Chavalliaud of famous gardeners, explorers and scientists. Flanking the north entrance are A le Notre and J Parkinson; to the east are Mercator and Captain Cook; to the south are Darwin and Linnaeus; and to the west are Henry the Navigator and Columbus.

HISTORICAL NOTE: Sefton Park was subject to an attack by militant suffragettes in November 1913. The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester in 1903. Its members were committed to direct action incorporating increasingly violent attacks on property, and the Sefton Park attack was one of a number of attempts to cause criminal damage in public parks nationally. A park keeper discovered a home-made bomb in the porch of the palm house; its fuses had been lit but had blown out in the wind. In keeping with the WSPU policy, the perpetrator was not formally identified, although it is likely to have been carried out by Kitty Marion, a self-confessed suffragette arsonist and bomber who had suffragette friends in Liverpool, and who pasted press cuttings relating to this attack in her scrap book.

This list entry was amended in 2018 as part of the centenary commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

Listing NGR: SJ3788487565