BBC bosses want to adapt Elizabeth Gaskell's novel, Wives and Daughters, for television, but are worried about the noise from HOLIDAY JETS.

Mrs Gaskell's unfinished novel is set in 19th century Hollingford - a thinly disguised Tatton Park and Knutsford - and would spark a tourism boom for the town if it was filmed here.

But the four 75-minute episodes may be filmed elsewhere because the producers won't be able to keep the sound of jets off the film.

"It will be good for Elizabeth Gaskell but not for Knutsford," said Joan Leach, who guided location scouts when they visited the town last year.

A BBC producer this week insisted no location had yet been chosen, but Mrs Leach said she'd been told the noise problem would be impossible to overcome.

Tourism bosses at Lyme Hall, Stockport, and Stamford, Lincolnshire - the settings for Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch - said the arrival of the cameras led to an unprecedented boom in visitors.

Ginny Beckett, film officer for Stamford, said extra revenue for catering, security and prop-makers was estimated to be worth £600,000 alone.

And after Middlemarch was screened on American TV, the pretty Georgian town saw a sharp increase in curious tourists.

Staff at Lyme Hall said a scene of heart-throb Colin Firth in front of the Disley stately home was enough to send visitor numbers soaring by 500 per cent in the month after it was screened.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.