FIRED by a single comment I overheard while waiting for attention from an assistant, I felt compelled to write and put matters straight.

The comment was "Chippenham doesn't have much to offer, just the Heritage Centre."

Where was I? I was in the Tourist Information Centre, now situated in the oldest building still standing and recently refurbished.

The young lady behind the counter then proceeded to send the tourists to Lacock and on to Bath.

I was so angry I turned around and walked out.

I have lived and worked in and around Chippenham for most of my life and there was so much I wanted to say to those tourists.

What about Chippenham's history? Brunel's Railway bridge and his drawing room at the railway station? The Market Place with The Angel and The Bear hotels and the Buttercross, the Shambles and livestock market place outside St Andrew's Church. St Paul's Church in Malmesbury Road. The registrar and magistrates' court that was the site of a villa in King Alfred's time. How about all its Saxon history?

Chippenham has undergone many changes, some good, some not so good.

It hasn't always been a mini Milton Keynes with its many roundabouts and traffic calming measures.

It was once the centre of all the outlying villages, the place to shop.

The livestock market and general market brought the villagers flooding into the centre.

The town would literally hum to the sound of voices catching up on the week's events.

The shops themselves were varied but supplied everything from groceries to leather belts, clothing to herbal medicine. Now we have the estate agents, holiday operators, charity shops and card shops.

But the question is who teaches the staff that work in the Tourist Information?

Is it the council? Are they concerned when the staff do not even mention the very building they are working in?

Does it worry them that tourists are being sent to Lacock?

Can the staff be given a history lesson on the town they are working in?

Has apathy spread so far into the lives of those who do the interviewing and those who do the job itself, that no one cares anymore about Chippenham and its splendid history?

Maybe the staff of the tourist centre should visit the Heritage Centre and ask Mike Stone to bring them up to date on what Chippenham does have to offer.

MRS C BLAKE

Calne