It cannot be easy to live in a village which finds the tourism spotlight turned upon it. It happened to Esholt when it was the location for Emmerdale, with day-trippers peering through cottage windows. Holmfirth's loss of privacy following the success of Last of the Summer Wine was balanced by the prosperity the series brought to many of the town's small businesses.

Saltaire falls somewhere between these two. It has no links with any television drama, although it does crop up regularly on television - and always in a positive light. It does, though, attract a lot of tourists who help to support the businesses in the village and in Salts Mill.

They also annoy some of the residents, if Mrs Angela Williamson's views are typical. She says that villagers are being made to feel like novelty characters in a TV series. Saltaire, she says, is a village where people have to live, not a tourist attraction. In fact, it is both - and some of the people who come to live there do so precisely because it is a tourist attraction.

It is impossible to speculate on what Saltaire's fate might have been if the mill had not been rescued from decay. What is certain, though, is that the village would not be booming, as it now is, with house prices at a premium.

The Saltaire Project Group clearly has a long way to go to reconcile the split between the traders and some residents who perhaps don't realise how much they are envied by people who live elsewhere.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.