"those who have over the years packaged/presented Walter Pardon for public consumption."

There hasn't been any 'packaging'. WP has been presented as what he was: an accomplished traditional singer with a significant repertoire. He's been treated no differently in any significant respect from other traditional singers who were recorded and interviewed during the second half of the 20th Century, except in that the material is more substantial. No amount of nit-picking about the number of songs he sang, whether he learned a few from books or (shock, horror) records, whether he sang in the same style as his Uncle Billy, how he remembered the songs in the interim, whether he went to Sunday school, whether he was tutored in breathing, whether Knapton was 'cut off' from the outside world (who exactly claimed it was, BTW?), and whether he used melisma or not (I'm with Hillery on that one) makes a blind bit of difference to the fact that he was a very distinguished traditional singer. In (apparently) trying to find reasons that he was something less than that, you are holding him to a far higher standard than would any modern specialist in the field, or indeed Cecil Sharp himself.