SIR: It was with growing dismay that I read of the decision to loan a number of early textile artefacts from the Museum collection to the Manchester and Helmshore Museums for an initial five-year loan with options for extensions.

The decision to loan these artefacts is indeed a sad reflection on the fact that Bolton, with its vast and complex industrial heritage, cannot provide a suitable venue for the display of these and other priceless relics.

Every effort should be made to remedy this appalling deficiency.

Whilst it is agreed that both Hall i'th' Wood and Smithills Hall do not have the desired requirements for the display of heavy artefacts, this does not mean to say that provision could not be made at some later date at the latter site so that visitors to the Heritage Centre could be given an overall picture of Bolton from earliest times to the present day.

I note with interest that a Project Manager is being sought for the Greater Manchester Industrial Heritage Initiative, with European funding, for a contract to run up to June 1998. The person appointed should be introduced, at an early date, to members of Bolton Civic Trust, and Historical Society Members, so that their collective views can be aired concerning the loaning out of important artefacts and the importance of a permanent industrial museum in the town.

In the meantime, the collective opinions of the various historical societies should be heeded and the whole matter of artefact loaning put in abeyance and reconsidered by the Bolton Council as a matter of some urgency and that all avenues of alternative location should be re-examined.

If the Manchester Museum wish to arrange a major textile exhibition using Bolton artefacts as an integral component, then every effort should be made for the proposed exhibition to be mounted in Bolton.

Denis O'Connor

Bolton Industrial History Society

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