I FULLY agree with Ronald Dyson (Letters, November 7) that Bury Arts and Crafts Centre should be kept open for its original purpose. The present site of the Fusiliers Museum seems always very presentable, but if it is desired to be more central, then Bury Drill Hall would seem appropriate.

The council really are missing a golden opportunity to convert the Broad Street venue into a world heritage site. If Telford was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, then Bury was the "engine". What other town can display the remains of a factory powered by water, as in Ashworth Valley, or the site of Peel's cotton mills in Bury and Radcliffe?

Apart from Peel being a leader in the cotton industry, he was the chairman of Bury's Turnpike Trust appointed to build Bury's portion of the road to Blackburn. His wife gave birth to a son in Bolton Street, who became Prime Minister, who later founded Britain's police force.

The Broad Street site could be expanded to incorporate the adjoining old Co-op haberdashery store, now used as Bury's health offices. Even if it was impossible to show the great machines made in Bury by Walmsleys, Robert Hall, Mather and Platt, and Dobson and Barlow at Bradley Fold, some of our model engineers would be delighted to make miniature imitations of these machines for display in the old college.

What of the chemistry industry pioneered by Britain's first manufacturer of formaldehyde, Arthur Ashworth at the Fernhill Works?

The tanning industry benefited from the supply of a tanning fluid which waterproofed shoe soles made by Walker's Tannery in Bolton. This Bury pioneer lived at Dunster House. He was a Liberal who paid Ramsbottom Council to repair Holcombe's Peel Monument in the 1930s.

Henry Dunster went to America and helped found Harvard University. And what of Kay's Flying Shuttle which revolutionised weaving?

There is really no end to the possibilities for making the town a "must see" visiting centre for world tourists.

JAMES B. MASON,

Strangford Street, Radcliffe.