BLACKBURN Museum is known throughout the international musical world as housing the Kathleen Ferrier Archive. As late as 1993, Winifred Ferrier decided to donate the memorabilia of her renowned sister remaining in her possession.

Her decision was influenced by the reported personal concern shown by senior staff of the museum to individual visitors.

Three years later when interest in the great singer and her early environment grows, visitors will be confronted, due to morning closure, by locked doors - a frustration which disappointed children and their families faced during the recent Easter holidays.

The closure and diminished staffing are an affront to those benefactors of the past whose aspirations reflected those of Blackburn people, supported widely by those in the surrounding area. These restricting town hall decisions smack of 'British' Rail privatisation, and one-time ploys such as keeping public swimming bath temperatures so low that nobody comes.

ANNE BRADLEY Hoghton Lane, Higher Walton.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.