IS there anybody left in your part of Lancashire, who knows how to make a proper barm cake?

I get fobbed off with bread cakes here in Yorkshire, and it's the same story when I visit relatives in Atherton. Bread cakes are a very poor imitation of a proper barm cake, and cannot be compared.

All the small family bakeries who made them seem to have closed down, and in spite of numerous inquiries I have been unable to find the recipe.

When I was a tea lad at the Lancashire Power Company's depot, Hill Top, Walkden, in 1940, collecting orders for dinner, BBC's -- buttered barm cakes -- were always top of the list.

It would be a great shame if the recipe for this Lancashire delicacy and former staple food of the working man was allowed to disappear.

Kenneth Rigby

Batcliffe Drive

Leeds