A FAMOUS East Lancashire museum is threatened with closure - despite growing numbers of visitors.

Blackburn with Darwen Council has plans to shut the Lewis Textile Museum - given to the town 62 years ago - to save about £10,000 and create extra office space for town hall officials.

The proposal will be unveiled at the leisure, sport and cultural services committee on Wednesday as councillors meet to decide cuts in the town hall budget.

The shutdown could cost one part-time job. But with the new unitary council operating a no-compulsory-redundancies policy, still to be ratified with trade unions, it is likely the member of the museum staff affected could be redeployed elsewhere.

But the plan to use the Lewis for more town hall office space could upset local history lovers and East Lancashire schools which use the museum - the first textile museum in the country - as a learning base. As some councils have switched leisure facilities to separate trust status - one example being Sheffield's museums - an alternative councillors could consider is to remove the small Exchange Street museum from council control by making it a small independent charitable trust.

This would entitle the museum, which was donated to Blackburn in 1936 by textile manufacturer Thomas Lewis, to an 80 per cent reduction in business rates.

But it would also mean that visitors would face admission charges for the first time.

See OPINION

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