The owners of a popular village tearoom are facing financial disaster after their business was closed in the wake of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Stanmer Village Tearoom in Stanmer Park, Brighton, has been closed since February when the area was ruled out of bounds to the public in a bid to stop the livestock disease spreading.

The park and Stanmer Rural Museum opened for the first time following the outbreak during the bank holiday weekend but the public is still barred from the village, which is close to a dairy herd.

Iris Forbes and her business partner Alan Wootton stand to lose up to £100,000 this year, plus more than £2,000 per quarter in rent to the lease-owner, Brighton and Hove City Council.

They only bought the business at the beginning of the year and spent £15,000 redecorating the tearoom but they were forced to close after their first week of opening.

They also run The Brighton Tavern in Gloucester Road and The Dragon pub in Kemp Town and said the only reason they were still in business was because they were subsidising the tearooms with the profits from their two other ventures.

Ms Forbes said the tearooms were draining the pubs of profit and there would be little point staying in business if the restrictions carried on.

She said: "We've basically had to put the business on a back-burner.

"We are running the pubs just to exist and pay for the tearooms.

"Stanmer Park reopened but the village is still closed to the public because we are right next to a dairy herd.

"I have mixed feelings every day. One minute I worry about the animals and of course I understand how important the restrictions are, but the next I think I just want to get rid of the tearoom because it has become such a burden.

"It was my idea to open the business. I was so looking forward to running it but now we can't do anything with it.

"Nobody will buy it with the restrictions in place but we can't open it either.

"We don't know when the tearooms will be open again, they are going to be closed indefinitely. We don't know if we'll ever open again."

Organisers of the Essential Festival, one of Brighton and Hove's biggest music events, also suffered because of foot-and-mouth restrictions when they were forced to switch venues because managers of Stanmer Park could not guarantee the site would be open in time for the summer.

The festival will now be staged in London. The Stanmer Horse Driving Trials in May, which are attended by the Duke of Edinburgh, were also cancelled.