A WORCESTER store manager is nursing a sore face after apparently being bitten by a house spider.

Janet Harvey says she has travelled "extensively" without so much as a nip from a mosquito and was amazed when a doctor at the city's Ronkswood Hospital told her she had probably been the victim of a common creepy-crawly.

Miss Harvey said she woke up with three bites on her face last Thursday and went to the accident and emergency department in Worcester on Tuesday after the bites failed to heal.

"The doctor said it was a spider bite and he has never heard of it happening in England," said Miss Harvey, of Fox Drive, St Peter's.

A doctor gave the 30-year-old a course of antibiotics to rid her of an infection that had been caused by the bites.

"It is like someone's put a fag out on my face," said Miss Harvey, who is a manager for the Austin Reed concession within the city's Beatties store.

"They feel itchy. I don't wash my face because I don't want to touch them.

"At first I thought they were spots but they didn't heal. So I went into Boots and they thought I had been bitten by an insect."

Miss Harvey, who was born in Singapore, said she had travelled extensively to countries such as India and Sri Lanka and had never been bitten in her life.

"For me to react like this in England is extraordinary." she said. "Everybody in the store thinks it is a joke because, who gets bitten by a spider?"

Ian Netscher, a deputy warden at West Midlands Safari Park, Bewdley, said"spiders bite like anything else".

"They have a powerful bite to subdue their prey," he said. "You can get the common garden spiders in England that can be quite aggressive. She has probably been bitten by a normal house spider. She could have brushed it in her sleep."

"The patient was given the same treatment as for any bite," said a spokeswoman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust .

"It would be unusual if it were a spider bite."