some alterations over the years and now houses council offices and a small café. The extensive stables and coachhouse remain at the rear of the house. The mansion house is currently being refurbished to accommodate the International Headquarters for Shared Reading. This refurbishment is being run by the Reader Organisation. The Allerton Oak One of the park's two most ancient features, estimated at 1,000 years old, is an oak tree. According to legend the ancient local Hundred Court sat beneath its branches. Its dilapidated state is said to be due to the explosion of the gunpowder ship Lottie Sleigh over three miles away on the River Mersey in 1864. It is dependent upon a number of props that hold it up. Acorns and leaves from the oak were sent to soldiers by their families during World War II, such was the reputation of this tree. The tree was named England's 'tree of the year' in 2019 by Woodland Trust. Botanical garden After World War II Percy Conn, the new Superintendent of Liverpool Parks, had the vision to recreate the Liverpool Botanic Garden of William Roscoe & John Shepherd from the Mount Pleasant days, in the Harthill Estate grounds at Calderstones Park. This work was started in 1951 and completed in 1964 when the set of 16 connected glasshouses was formally opened. Calderstones botanical garden contained almost 4,000 species of plants brought from all over the world by merchants and other travellers. As funding was very tight post-war, low-grade spruce, rather than teak, was used to build the glasshouses, and by 1979 they had reached the end of their useful lives. The early 1980s was another occasion when the Liverpool City economy was dire, and no money could be found to re-build the glasshouses. The botanical importance of the park encouraged further horticultural improvements such as the creation of a Japanese Garden by park apprentices in 1969, and the introduction of a ‘bog garden’ linked to the artificial lake. In 1984 the glasshouses were closed and all the plants transported to the Liverpool City nursery at Garston, where they remained for the next 23 years. Some of the plants were occasionally seen at Southport Flower Shows over this period. In 2007/2008 a third of the plants were re-housed in 4 glasshouses within Croxteth Hall’s walled gardens when Garston Nursery was closed as a consequence of the outsourcing of Liverpool's Park &