ASHORT time ago I saw, with mixed feelings, the final despatch to oblivion of the 'lunacy' section of the old Union Workhouse in Blackburn. I, and many others like me, spent the lion's share of a working life there within its wards and corridors.

There is more than a hint of pride and privilege felt by staff, past and present that we were connected, in a small way, to the history of that building.

For 150 years it sheltered within its walls human adversity, resilience, tears and laughter.

For 150 years that building, for the most part, kept its secrets of human drama and endurance.

At its heart was its purpose, almost unaltered through the passing years.

Its doors were open to many faces; faces of interesting people. Some were incredible and loveable, some were bitter, but all appeared to be bravely struggling with whatever life had doled out to them.

Some in the first few years of the mid-1800s had troubles that must have touched the soul of God.

The stone building had its own dignity, built by workhouse inmates on the bleakest heights of the town. Unemployed stone masons and destitute, near-starving local labourers hacked, chiselled and sawed the building into existence and then its story really began.

The story passed by great-grandparents down through the years to us, the families of Blackburn. The Cotton Famine was and is our Lancashire history.

So many people near starvation lost their jobs and their homes. Tuberculosis and scarlet fever wreaked havoc among them.

Driven by desperation they ended up in the 'workhouse.'

Families were separated on arrival. Men sent from their womenfolk and children taken from their mothers and placed in 'cottage homes' off site.

Older children were sent, many of them, to work in local coal pits, but at least the other children received lessons in the workhouse school, which, I believe, still stands at Queen's Park Hospital.

Surely, we might show our gratitude to our forebears in some form of the old-stonework being dedicated to their memory.

I BUTLER, Fowler Height Close, Blackburn.