The national news magazine ‘Private Eye’ features Heaton Hall this week.

The magazine highlights the fact that (Manchester) City Council’s website says: “Due to the city’s financial pressures the hall will not be open to the public on a regular basis”. Private Eye goes on: “In fact it is closed for the foreseeable future and being used to store furniture from Wythenshawe Hall …. also closed thanks to budget cuts”.

Heaton Hall was designed by celebrated British Architect James Wyatt. A new biography of the architect says that: “This is Wyatt’s major surviving early country house, one that displays his full genius and the first on which he demonstrated the developed panoply of his architectural originality’.”

My view is that we are really lucky to have such a archtectural treasure on our doorsteps – it is a shame it cannot be brought back into use. None of us can deny that local councils have to make savings at the present time, but Manchester Council IS finding the money to spend £165 MILLION on refurbishing the Town Hall extension and library – as the local Labour Party boasts here

Private Eye concludes: “Heaton Hall and Park were acquired to benefit the people of Manchester, to whom they belong. If the council cannot look after Heaton Hall and open it to the public, it should be transferred to a body which can, like the National Trust or English Heritage”.

Read the full Private Eye article here.