Permalinks and folders

Sorry if this has been asked, I have searched for a good 30 minutes to resolve this. I have wordpress installed in my root directory and Permalinks enabled (/%category%/%postname%/)

The Permalinks work find but now I cannot access my folders that were present in the root directory before wordpress was installed. e.g. /images/

My htaccess is as follows:

HeaderName /ht/header.html  

IndexOptions FoldersFirst
IndexOptions IgnoreCase
IndexOptions NameWidth=50
IndexOptions SuppressDescription
IndexOptions SuppressHTMLPreamble
IndexOptions FancyIndexing IconWidth=24 IconHeight=16 NameWidth=25 DescriptionWidth=50

DefaultIcon /ht/i_oth.gif
AddIcon (DIR,/ht/i_dir.gif) ^^DIRECTORY^^
AddIcon (JPG,/ht/i_jpg.gif) .jpg
AddIcon (GIF,/ht/i_gif.gif) .gif
AddIcon (MOV,/ht/i_mov.gif) .mov
AddIcon (WMV,/ht/i_wmv.gif) .wmv
AddIcon (AVI,/ht/i_wmv.gif) .avi
AddIcon (ZIP,/ht/i_zip.gif) .zip
AddIcon (RAR,/ht/i_rar.gif) .rar
AddIcon (SWF,/ht/i_swf.gif) .swf
AddIcon (WAV,/ht/i_wav.gif) .wav .mid .midi
AddIcon (MP3,/ht/i_mp3.gif) .mp3
AddIcon (HTML,/ht/i_htm.gif) .html .htm .shtml
AddIcon (EXE,/ht/i_exe.gif) .exe .hqx

AddIcon (???,/ht/i_oth.gif) .ico .js .ini .dll .txt .doc .xls .ppt .pps .sql .divx .fla

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>