Delight: In an extraordinary fit of local and national enthusiasm, Sefton park has been crowned again with its gleaming iron and glass Palm House, now faithfully restored to Victorian magnificence.

Sefton is one of the more affluent suburbs of Liverpool. In 1872, its park was inaugurated, a mighty green space like those of the other northern industrial towns: Open to the poor and surrounded by the villas of the rich -- a concept first propounded by Nash and Repton at London'S Regent's Park in the early years of the century.

In 1987, the Palm House was completed. The shining iron and glass structure replaced the bandstand on the highest part of the brought to cold and grimy northern England from all over the Empire, which provided the city with its wealth. The prefabricated design seems to have been bought virtually off the shelf from Messrs Mackenzie & Moncur of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

By the early 1990s. the place was dilapidated, closed and threatened by demolition. Popular pressure, culminating in a 75 per cent grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, allowed restoration of the whole thing. It was dismantled by Shepley Engineers down to the basic eight columns and their crowning gallery, which were all abraided and repainted. Many of the glazing bars were found to be cracked because of differential expansion between wrought and cast iron elements after a new and more efficient heating system was installed after the Second Word War.

All sound elements were cleaned and finished with modern paints; broken elements were replaced in cast spheroidal graphite iron to exactly the same sections as the originals. And the shell was re-assembled. Getting of for 4000 individually templated panes of to toughened glass were carefully inserted, each in its particular place. Shepley's managed to a achieve the original Victorian 3mm tolerances.

Now the Palm House glitters again as the crown of the park. The inside is less lush than it was, for the place is used for social events as well as botanical instruction. But there are still palms from a all over the prodigality of nature in the way it must have done for our ancestor 100 years ago.