FREE fun at two of the district's museums drew streams of Bank Holiday weekend visitors as families dodged the changeable weather and headed indoors.

Animal Attraction is a new mini-exhibition within the grand space of Bradford Industrial Museum with glass cabinets full of items showing links between local folk and their furry, hairy or feathery friends throughout history.

Aimed at children, there is plenty of taxidermy with stuffed rabbits, squirrels foxes and even a 19th century English bulldog.

One of the first youngsters through the door at Moorside Mills on Saturday was eight-year-old Abigail Turner, of Cleckheaton, who was on a fact-finding mission with her grandma Nancy Crowther.

"I'm in Year Three at Scholes Village Primary School and am doing a project on all things to do with Yorkshire," Abigail said, as she hugged a toy alpaca.

"I've got a dog and two guinea pigs and I think this museum is very interesting and impressive."

Animal Attraction prompts discussions on how animals fitted into city life either as pets, in literature or as work animals such as Tommy the cab horse from Ben Rhydding near Ilkley, whose gravestone is one of the exhibits.

The special exhibition, complete with a "play field" stocked with toy animals, runs until November and admission to the museum is free.

Animals also loomed large at a vintage fair inspired by Alice In Wonderland at Cliffe Castle Museum, Keighley, on Saturday at the opening of an exhibition based on Lewis Carroll's magical work.

And an astonishingly life-like dormouse made from felt was amongst creatures from the tale specially created by artist Malachai Beesley.

Stalls heaved with all things wonderful including Alice bands, White Rabbit waistcoats, and lots of mad hats.

As part of the Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland exhibition, in June there will be a talk on hat-making by local milliner Beth Hughes.

A museum spokesman said the event had been a great success:

"We've had a lot of favourable comments about how enjoyable it was and how people want to come again.

"There was a good attendance and the free tea party with pink lemonade went down particularly well.

"We've also manage to find a link between Cliffe Castle's original owner Henry Isaac Butterfield and Alice in that his granddaughter Marie Louise Roosevelt Butterfield did actually meet the Alice Liddell on whom the character was based."

The exhibition will run until October 30.

Ale lovers were indulged over the weekend at both the Bradford Independent Beer Festival at the BrewHaus and Stein Bierkeller bars, in the Old Windsor Baths building on Randall Well Street, Bradford, and also at the Baildon Beer festival held in the town's Moravian church.