So Barnet Borough Council has magnanimously erected an information board in Russell Lane covering the history of the area. If it is so interested in establishing noticeboards about local history, perhaps it should also erect one in Greyhound Hill, Hendon, explaining that this is where once upon a time we had the quirky but superb Church Farmhouse Museum dedicated to commemorating the area’s fascinating past, that is, until March 2011, when the philistines on the council made one of their most notoriously stupid decisions.

Can the council explain how it has saved any money at all by depriving Barnet residents of their beloved local museum?

After failing (not unexpectedly) to find a buyer for this Grade II-listed building, the desperate council voted last September to offer Middlesex University a seven-year rent-free lease, while also agreeing to contribute the bulk of the £500,000 needed for renovation work that is largely the result of Barnet’s own negligence. How demeaning is that?

Furthermore, after closing down the museum, the council auctioned off its artefacts for a mere £17,000. This income is peanuts compared with the expenditure of tens of thousands of pounds (probably more than £100,000 by now) on security for the empty building, security that has in any case proved inadequate, since it failed to prevent the theft of a number of York paving slabs worth at least £70 each from the building’s forecourt in May last year.

I would love to see some figures comparing the alleged savings arising from the closure of the museum with the probable costs (and social benefits) of keeping it open.

Edgar de Jarnac

Bunns Lane, Mill Hill