Horses galloped and arrows whistled in the Royal parkland of Liverpool, which is about to be explored by new hunters seeking ‘Oh dears’. David Charters reports

MELANCHOLY rain raps the roof of the little Polo saloon, gasping and burping along near-derelict streets, in which metal sheets guard the windows on the large, red-bricked family houses – while various emotions shine through the blue eyes of the driver in owl glasses.

Then the traffic groans to a halt by Lodge Lane Motors, which sells “quality used cars”, just in front of the Boundary pub stationed on one of Liverpool’s most historic spots.

It was here that a high mud wall was built, fronted by lethal stakes, around the Royal Hunting Park of Toxteth, so that local men of aristocratic ambition and their cowering sycophants could release arrows into the hides of deer and other creatures destined for the dining tables.

“I shouldn’t keep stopping really,” says the driver, Jean Grant, as a man in a bigger car glares down in an unsympathetic manner, suggesting a thrusting executive, whose imagination does not regularly gloop in the marsh-lands of ancient Liverpool.

By contrast, Jean’s imagination is very much for glooping, and that makes her one of the city’s human treasures. Bow strings are twanging, arrows whistling and horses’ hooves thundering in her mind.

An artist by training, a historian by inclination and a romantic by calling, she is one of Liverpool’s good eggs, fighting tenaciously to ensure that the city’s medieval past is not lost to the coming generations.

In pursuit of this ambition, she has helped to organise Sunday’s event called Hunt Royale: An Exploration of the Historical Boundaries of the Royal Park of Toxteth – laid out in 1207 after King John granted Liverpool the Letters Patent (Royal Charter), which established a small township and expanded the port, from which soldiers could be sent to rebellious Ireland.

Those taking part will be invited to seek out “Oh Dears” as they follow the route. This is a reference to the words heard so often in this city when people learn of what has happened to a cherished piece of our past.

Sadly, a lot of “Oh Dears” roam these parts, though the man in the bigger car expressed his feelings more fruitily, as he drove ferociously in the direction of what was once Moss Lake, a vast area of water and bog, stretching between the sites now occupied by Royal Liverpool Hospital and the Women’s Hospital. Fast, deep streams once flowing down from there. But Jean is now passing the Holy Land, the streets named after prophets, where the busy wee comedian Arthur Askey was brought up.

This isn’t far from the Welsh streets, home to the young Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) and not far from the old Wellington Road School, where the cobbler’s son, Ronnie Wycherley (Billy Fury) was a pupil.

It is around here that the districts of Dingle and Toxteth rub shoulders.

Dingle was the name given to a wooded hollow, through which ran a stream. And the one that ran here was said to be of singular beauty.

Much of the old hunting park is being redeveloped under the Government’s controversial New Heartlands programme, but Princes Park remains an open space – 45 hectares of land designed by Joseph Paxton and James Pennethorne, which opened in 1842.