Even after the objections of more than 900 people to dissuade the council plus a further 224 people who signed and wrote letters that were deemed racist by the council that they did not have the nerve to be made public, the Conservative-controlled Ribble Valley borough council gave the go-ahead for a chapel to be turned into a mosque.  The slow decline of the Mount Zion chapel on Lowergate Street , Clitheroe , featured in the painting A street in Clitheroe by LS Lowry , and its change to a mosque is a story that is being replicated throughout Britain.  It seems that converting this chapel into a mosque was a step too far. The local paper, the Clitheroe Advertiser and Times, was inundated with letters. Two weeks before the planning committee heard the application, the editor refused to accept any more letters citing legal issues over content, the length of letters and restrictions on space.  On the day of the vote, more than 150 people attended the council chamber. The chair of the planning committee, Richard Sherras, summed up the councils dilemma:   We are in a catch-22 situation: we can approve the application and be accused of ignoring the wishes of the majority of the public, or we can refuse the application and be branded racist, he told the committee.  Either way a piece of Britain has been lost.