A silk purse from a sow's ear?

WHILE we would be the last to argue against any plan to upgrade facilities at Warrington’s Walton Hall to enable to continue its role as a catering and hospitality venue, we are less certain about longer term proposals to try and make it one of the North West’s premier historic estate attractions.
There is an old saying about silk purses and sow’s ears and we are far from convinced that it is not appropriate here.
Is Walton Hall really historic? It dates from the 1830s which, while a respectable age, hardly compares with Tatton Hall, built at the turn of the 15th century or even Dunham Massey Hall, built on the site of a 1616 Tudor House and with a moat which still powers a working Jacobean mill.
It pales into insignificance compared to Lyme Hall, which has Camellias growing in its grounds thought to be older than the one-time home of the Greenall brewery family.
We are not the first to cast doubt on the historic value of Walton.. In 1976 a borough councillor described it as an “architectural monstrosity” and warned against pouring public money into a “bottomless pit.”
Lest we dismiss the word of a mere elected representative, we recall that in the early Seventies, before much of the hall was demolished, the borough surveyor of the time dismissed it as “a typical beer baron’s mansion.”
So, yes. Let us keep Walton in good condition. Let it continue to earn £500,000-a-year for the council.
But let us not get carried away with any ideas that it can become one of the region’s premier historic estate attractions.