A MEDIAEVAL mystery has been solved in a book by Welsh Marches historian and writer Katherine Lack.

Her findings were revealed to an enthralled audience in Ludlow's St Laurence's Church a week ago.

Now Dr Lack, who is also a familiar face in Tenbury as the wife of to the former Rector of the Teme Valley South parishes, plans to return to Ludlow in January to deliver a series of talks at the Bishop Mascall Centre.

Her own story began in the mid-1980s when a unique mediaeval burial was accidentally uncovered in Worcester Cathedral. The grave was complete with strong leather boots, walking staff and a mysterious cockleshell.

To Dr Lack he was clearly a man of importance. But who he was, why he was accorded a burial in the cathedral and what the items in his grave signified were a mystery.

Her investigations led, she believes, to proof of identity. In her book, The Cockleshell Pilgrim, she traces the steps of Worcester man, Robert Sutton, who travelled a long and arduous pilgrimage to the shrine of St James at Compostela in north-western Spain.

The book describes "a fascinating and vivid story of Sutton's journey, with all it's dangers and delights, across war-torn and plague ridden, mediaeval Europe to the tomb of St James, using surviving mediaeval journals of the pilgrimage, and a range of other contemporary evidence".

These include songs, court records and household accounts which helped to reconstruct the journey he might have taken in the spring of 1423.

In the process, the book says, she also discovered many fascinating parallels between the mediaeval pilgrimage and the journeys made by the many thousands who follow in Sutton's footsteps today.

Last year, 55,000 pilgrims went to Compostela, and in 2004 for the Holy Year of St James a quarter of a million people are expected to make the journey.

Dr Lack graduated from Somerville College, Oxford in 1980 and is a freelance writer and lecturer in church history, with a special interest in the lessons that can be learned from mediaeval times

She is planning a tour of ornate Romanesque Herefordshire churches whose architecture may have been influenced by a wealthy Norman pilgrim.

There is a chance to meet Dr Lack at a book signing on Saturday, October 11, between 10am and 12 noon at Books, Books, Books, in Teme Street. Details of her lecture tour in the Ludlow area are available on 01743 355137.