MORE than 1,600 homes in Wharfedale were without electricity between Tuesday and Wednesday.

The villages affected included Appletreewick, Arncliffe, Bordley, Burnsall, Grassington and Kettlewell.

Although some villages such as Grassington only saw an hour-long dip in power supply, other places such as Kettlewell were left in the dark overnight, causing pubs, shops and the village school to close.

Kettlewell resident Ian Cuthbert said that the electricity had gone down around 4.15pm on Tuesday and had been restored at about 9.15am on Wednesday.

He said: "We had have a significant number of outages of which this has been the longest. We are now getting desperate. The school is closed and a WI meeting last night had to be cancelled."

Sue Sands, landlady of Kettlewell's Racehorses Hotel, said that the pub had not shut, but had to operate by candlelight and had not been able to serve hot meals.

A Yorkshire Electricity Distribution spokesman said: "Two separate faults occurred on one of the main overhead lines that delivers power to the Grassington, Kettlewell and Burnsall areas at 3:36pm yesterday affecting 1,688 customers.

"Engineers worked throughout the night to get the electricity supplies back on, and by 9:27am power was restored. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers."