Canterbury Cathedral recorded a six per cent drop in visitor numbers in 2008, placing them 22nd in a national table compiled by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions.

The cathedral’s head of visitor services, Therese Heslop, said outside factors would have played a part in the decrease.

“We had the Lambeth Conference throughout July and August, which meant we had to close the cathedral and its precincts to the public for a considerable amount of time, during our busiest period of the year.

“Added to that, the last six months of 2008 showed a very marked drop in visitor and tourist numbers across the board.”

However, despite the predictions of the economic downturn continuing through the rest of 2009, the picture does look brighter.

“We have recorded very encouraging figures so far this year and we had a very busy half-term holiday,” said Mrs Heslop.

“Our forward bookings for March and April look very strong, but it’s very hard to predict exactly how many people will come through our doors beyond that into the summer months.”

Last year’s total number of visitors dropped to 981,360 from an estimated 1,040,000 in 2007.