The Five Flags Hotel, known as a landmark across the district for its series of flag poles, has been left with just two flags after strong winds swept the others away.

Now new owners Joe and Mandy Bardgett plan to replace the flags as part of sweeping changes they are making to the Cullingworth venue.

Battered by the winter winds, only two half flags remain on their poles - the Union Flag and the European Union flag.

Two other poles are stripped bare and a fifth flag is in tatters.

"They have taken a battering in the wind," said Mrs Bardgett, for whom the hotel is her former home. She ran it with her father and sister in the early 1990s before they sold it.

"We intend to get the flags changed, but it is not the right time of year now because they become so ragged in the wind.

"When we had the hotel last time we had the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, the Yorkshire Rose, the Lancashire Rose and the EU flag.

"We haven't decided what we will replace the flags with yet."

The couple took over the venue in October last year. In December they bought the nearby Three Sisters Hotel at Haworth.

"We used the Five Flags as our local and when we heard it was up for sale we decided to go for it," said Mr Bardgett, who has given up his job as a project manager for Bradford Council.

Mr Bardgett is a former Keighley Rugby League Club player, having played stand-off and winger for the team in the mid-1970s and 1980s.

The couple intend to enlarge the gymnasium by extending into two of the 31 bedrooms.

They also plan to refurbish all the bedrooms, corridors and all the public areas.

And they are to decorate the function room in a bid to start regular cabaret nights. The first act is scheduled to appear in April.

The hotel includes a swimming pool and leisure facilities which were developed by Mrs Bardgett's family when they owned it.