A CONCISE and extremely useful booklet guide to the churches and chapels of Worcester is now available at only around 50p.

This thumbnail account of the histories and attractions of all the city's Anglican, Roman Catholic, Non-Conformist and other churches, chapels and meeting places has been compiled by local historians Tim Bridges and Annette Leech with illustrations by Clare Norton.

The guide is available from the SPCK Bookshop in High Street and from the Friends Meeting House in Sansome Walk. The authors stress that those Worcester's churches still in use today have "special atmospheres of great peace, to be treasured in the busy city of today."

Among gems of information are that St Helen's in Fish Street may stand on the site of a place of worship from Roman times, that St Swithun's in Church Street still possesses its Georgian pews, west gallery and three-decker pulpit, and that the Elim Pentecostal Church in Lowesmoor began life in 1823 as a Weslyan chapel for boatmen working on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

The guide also tells us of Worcester's "vanished churches" including St Clement's which stood close to the riverside at Dolday, St Michael's which was opposite the Cathedral in College Street, St Peter's, which was off Sidbury, and Holy Trinity, which was at Shrub Hill. Most of them were pulled down in the middle of the 20th Century.

The guide gives brief information, too, about Worcester's former monasteries and surviving almshouse complexes.

* Also recently published and available from the same outlets at about £2 is the Worcester Quaker Walk - a guide to places of significance to the "Friends", or Quakers, who have now worshipped in the city for more than three centuries. A few months ago, Memory Lane carried a feature on the eventful history of the Quakers in Worcester and their considerable contribution to the religious life, prosperity and social well-being of the city. The "Worcester Quaker Walk" has been produced by Annette Leech, again with illustrations by Clare Norton.