A tourist centre has bucked the trend and recorded one of its highest-ever number of visitors for January.

Other tourist honey-pots like Haworth's Bront Parsonage Museum and the National Trust's East Riddlesden Hall in Keighley have seen thousands fewer people through their doors. But Haworth Tourist Information Centre (TIC) has seen them pouring in.

This January saw 6,499 people visit the office at the end of Main Street to register the best January figure in the last three years.

"January is the quietest month of the year but the figures show that Haworth is still very popular on the tourist trail," says TIC manager Tricia Tillotson.

Last year there were 151,945 people using the TIC, which is about the same as the previous year. Many of them were foreign tourists - especially Japanese and Americans who were interested in the Bront literary heritage and the landscapes of Bront country.

Two hundred metres away at the Bront Parsonage Museum, where the family lived in the last century, staff recorded about 82,000 visitors - a fall of 6,000 on the previous year. This weekend the museum opens again to the public after four weeks of closure for painting and carpet laying, and staff are hoping for a better summer.

After lengthy research the Bront Society has commissioned a specially woven carpet in the same style and colour - crimson - in place when Charlotte Bront redecorated in the early 1850s.

Bront Parsonage Director, Mike Hill says: "We know the carpet was a crimson flat weave in Charlotte's day because in the 1861 sale of effects there were four carpets in tufted flat weave." The replica carpet is also fitted wall-to-wall and not as commonly assumed placed in the middle.

The newly carpeted room will be on view from next week.

The season will start with a new exhibition to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charlotte's novel Shirley. The title of the exhibition - The Business of a Woman's Life - was taken from a letter by the poet Robert Southey to Charlotte. She had written to him seeking encouragement but he rebuffed her, implying that women should stick to housework. He wrote: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life; and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it."

Like National Trust staff at East Riddlesden Hall, Parson-age officials blame the poor summer last year and possibly the World Cup in June for the fall in visitor figures.

East Riddlesden Hall's Liz Houseman says: "It was a very poor summer - wet and cold. We believe that had a big impact on visitors and also the World Cup didn't help."

Last year saw 25,157 people visit the hall, a slump of 5,000 on the previous year. In June - World Cup month - there were only 2,689 visitors compared with 3,462 in 1997. October was one of the worst months with 2,224, compared to 3,551 in 1997.

The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, one of the biggest tourist attractions in the area, had 114,000 visitors last year, a fall of 3,000. But officials blame the drop on the closure of Ingrow tunnel in October while Yorkshire Water carried out repairs. "Railway chairman Graham Mitchell, says: "Until September we were level pegging with 1997 and very pleased but then we were hit hard by the closure of the tunnel."

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