Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
A continuum (that is, a compact connected Hausdorff space) is hereditarily locally connected if each of its subcontinua is locally connected. It is shown that a continuum X is hereditarily locally connected if and only if for each connected open set U in X and each point p in the boundary of U, U ∪ {p} is locally connected. This result is used to prove that if X is an hereditarily locally connected continuum, U is a connected open subset of X, p is an element of the boundary of U and X is first countable at p, then p is arcwise accessible from U.