THE site of the large open space from the corner of Bold Street, opposite the Museum, to the rear of the Friar's Green Independent Methodist Church in Cairo Street, has stirred me to pen this letter.

The bulldozers have done their work and 'The Stone House', another of Warrington's historic buildings has been demolished. For some 75 years, it provided the headquarters of the Warrington Royal British Legion and its club with bowling green. Before that it was the family home of the distinguished Pierpoint family.

Benjamin Pierpoint was one of William Beamont's fellow commissioners, appointed to petition Queen Victoria for the grant of the Borough Charter in 1847. The charter charged him to draw up and exhibit a Burgess List of persons entitled to vote for the first borough council. He was elected to that first council, was one of the first aldermen and became the third mayor in 1849. His father before him was connected with municipal life and his son Robert, born in 1845, was destined to be drawn into municipal affairs.

Robert Pierpoint attended Boteler Grammar School, then Eton and Oxford University and was called to the Bar in 1873.

He was MP for Warrington for 14 years from 1892, looking after Warrington's interests. In Parliament he continued to serve on the Museum Committee, to which he had been appointed in 1882 as a non-council member. His services to the borough were recognised in 1911, when the honorary freedom of the borough was conferred upon him.

Among the many speakers paying tribute to him was one who said that: "As a neighbour he had shown every conceivable consideration to the church at Friar's Green".

It was Robert Pierpoint who, having vacated The Stone House, made it available for an ex-servicemen's club, for the returning First World War veterans, which, on the formation of the British Legion, became a branch of that acclaimed body.

Perhaps the development can incorporate the Pierpoint name or that of The Stone House to acknowledge the historic past.

ERIC J NAYLOR

Francis Road, Walton