"FROM Hell, Hull and Halifax deliver us," was the 19th Century saying. Could Halifax (or Hull?) really have been that bad?

But the saying was coined by the criminal fraternity, and the hell that awaited in Halifax was execution. The town was one of the last places in the country to retain the use of the punishment (Hull had the prison) and it took the theft of goods worth a miserly 13 pence to put your neck on the block.

Today's visitors have little reason to give it such a wide berth.

Halifax is still deeply rooted in its industrial past - if you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of a thousand ghostly clogs beating their way to the textile mills - but modern attractions include the pedestrianised shopping centre and Eureka!, one of the best interactive children's museums in the country.

The museum is specifically designed for children and has more than 400 hands-on exhibits. They can jump into a giant mouth, pedal with a skeleton, build a bike with a computer, join a factory production line, work in the garage and make paper lanterns. My children's favourite was the bank, where they could fill in an application for a loan, have it approved by the bank manager, and be given a special code and card to extract a cheque from the cashpoint machine. They returned again and again with ever more ambitious loan applications, from "sweeties" to "a car and some pearls, please". Oddly, the bank manager never told them that in real life you would have to pay the bank back - with interest.

The museum fairly hums, buzzes and whirrs with life and soon soaked up four hours or so. There's no wonder it's netted a sackful of national awards.

"Character" is a word sometimes overused in towns; in Halifax it springs forth from every building. It can be seen in the huge medieval Parish Church; the spirit of hard work and entrepreneurship in buildings like the Piece Hall and Dean Clough Mill, and in sheer showmanship and wealth in building like Somerset House, Bankfield and the Town Hall.

Signs of the times are everywhere; Dean Clough Mill was one the largest makers of carpets in the world, but now houses hundreds of businesses, art galleries, a theatre and a Michelin-rated restaurant. The Piece Hall, a former cloth merchants hall, is rented out in small units to cafes and craftspeople. The Hall almost went down the demolition route, but, unlike the majority, it still stands today, saved by a single council vote, a monument to the once thriving textile trade. The "piece" refers to the lengths of the cloth sold - a piece of cloth was 30 yards.

In 1847 Halifax industrialist Edward Akroyd said that the town was like a growing lad "thrusting out a leg here and an arm here". What was impeding development was the lack of a train route. By 1855 that was put right and, in its heyday in 1863, 60,000 people and 358 carriages arrived in just two days for a royal visit by the Prince of Wales.

Just ten or so miles out of town on the way back up to the North-East is a very different kind of attraction. Bronte fans from all over the world converge on the unprepossessing town of Haworth to worship the family that wrote such classics as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Shirley.

The Reverend Patrick Bronte, his wife Maria and their six children came to live at Haworth Parsonage in 1820. It was their lifelong home, where they devoted themselves to literature, and the scene of too many tragic early deaths. Maria and Elizabeth, the eldest girls, died here in childhood not long after their mother. Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne survived into adulthood - just.

The Parsonage is a moment in their daily lives preserved in aspic. The Brontes are long gone, but the house - small for so many people, with servants - is set out with the family's own furniture and possessions; here are the little books they produced as children; there are Branwell's paintings. In the sitting room is the black horsehair sofa on which Emily is said to have died at two in the afternoon on December 19, 1848. Most remarkable are Charlotte Bronte's clothes, tiny dresses, minute gloves, and shoes that most of us wouldn't get our big toes into.

When they stepped outside for church and social visitations, the women of the house strapped wooden blocks to the undersides of their delicate house shoes. On a snowy day in March, they would certainly have needed them.

l Haworth is 12 miles north of Halifax. The museum is at the top of the village behind the Parish Church. The museum is open 10am to 5.30pm April to September; 11am to 5pm October to March. (01535) 647131. www.bronte.org.uk

l Scribblemania! The Early Works of the Brontes is on now.