New owners have taken over one of the best known hotels in the district - and are determined to make it live up to its name.

Among the list of changes to be made by Joe and Mandy Bardgett at the Five Flags Hotel at Cullingworth will be the renewal of the landmark five flags.

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

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

"We intend to get them changed. But it is not the right time of year now because they become so ragged in the wind," said Mrs Bardgett, who ran the pub with her father and sister in the early 1990s before they sold it.

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

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

The couple took over in October last year and in December bought the 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 gave up his job as a project manager for Bradford council.

He is a former Keighley rugby league 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 have plans 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 to appear in April.

The hotel also includes a swimming pool and leisure facilities, developed by Mrs Bardgett's family when they owned the hotel.