WRITER Marion Freeman has lived in Pershore for 33 years but is still, in her own words, "very much a foreigner".

However, her arrival in the town in 1972 signalled the start of a love affair which has seen her serve as town mayor during a brief career in local politics.

"On the day I moved to Pershore with my family in 1972 I walked to the shops.

"I passed several people, all of whom smiled and said 'Good Morning'. I was amazed - that had never happened in Surbiton. Thus began a love affair with the town, which has grown and expanded over the years."

The words are Marion's and mark the introduction to the latest fruit of that affair - her new book, Pershore Revisited.

A fascinating collection of more than 200 photographs, many of them being published for the first time, is backed by an eclectic conglomeration of tales from the town's past.

Together they bring alive the town's history, going back in time to the Middle Ages, when the rights to hold a fair were granted to the Abbot of Pershore by Henry III in 1266.

One wonders how today's critics of the licensing laws would have reacted to a practice which continued in Pershore on market days until 1868.

According to the book, "householders were allowed to provide beer and cider without licence provided they placed a green bush outside their doors". A recipe for binge drinking?

By 1836, the fair had moved from its original site in the churchyard to Broad Street and had become "a somewhat riotous event".

Marion reports: "On the evening prior to the fair, traders would stand at the entrances to Broad Street until, at 8pm, a local police inspector would give a signal for all to rush for the best pitches."

The weakest or slowest finished up with more unfashionable pitches in Weir Meadow, where the visit of an annual funfair is the sole remaining evidence of the charter granting.

The uncontrolled sale of drink might have died out by the turn of the 20th century, but Pershore retained an active group of the Temperance Society.

A photograph dated 1913 shows the group - exclusively female with the exception of some half a dozen boys of school age - which used to meet in the town's Baptist church.

One of Pershore's most famous pubs, the Brandy Cask, was also the site of one of the town's biggest tragedies.

Marion records: "On the afternoon of May 19, 1943, during a Wings for Victory Day held in Pershore, a Wellington bomber, one of several giving a flying exhibition, lost a wing and crashed into the roof of the Brandy Cask public house in Bridge Street where it burst into flames. The crew of five were killed instantly."

Marion, a founder member and current chairman of the Pershore Heritage and History Society has already had another book about the town, entitled simply Pershore, published.

However, she received so much material while researching it, "the whole project has become an ongoing one - almost an obsession".

And she retains the hope she will not remain a "foreigner" forever.

"I hope it won't be too long before I can regard myself as a local," she writes.

She certainly knows enough about the place to qualify.