The Remaking of King's Lynn tells in words, illustrations and photographs how the old medieval town, with its largely timber-framed structures, was transformed and expanded into one of a distinctly Georgian character, with brown brick buildings and rounded corners.

Mr Higgins, director of Lynn Preservation Trust and chairman of the Friends of Lynn Museum, said he stumbled across the work of the Paving Commissioners 15 years ago in his previous job as a town planner with responsibility for the conservation of historic buildings.

"Between 1803 and 1872, using powers conferred on them by local Paving Acts, these men reshaped the town in the name of improvement and oversaw a level of house building that doubled the town's housing stock," he said.

"Today the town as remade by the Paving Commissioners has become the 'old town'. Its good- quality townscape and wealth of historic buildings are much admired and cherished by locals and visitors alike."

In his fourth book, he contrasts the commissioners' work with Lynn's expansion under the 1962 London Overspill Agreement, when new housing estates and industrial areas were created and the town centre was redeveloped to provide new shops, car parks and service roads for the newcomers.

And he describes the "insensitive manner" in which it was carried out. He said it destroyed large swathes of the town's historic fabric only to be replaced by "the monolithic Vancouver Centre and the Hillington Square development, the designers of which completely ignored the established character of the old town".

Mr Higgins likes to concentrate on areas of Lynn's history that people have not noticed or covered in detail previously, and he revealed that behind the brown brick facades of many of the High Street premises remains much of the old timbered buildings.

The illustrations include the Rev Edward Edwards' circa 1800 sketch of the timber-framed Coney's House on the corner of High Street, facing Saturday Market Place, and William Austin's 1874 watercolour of the building after its Georgian-style transformation into Thew's printing office – this newspaper's original home.

• Mr Higgins is launching his book by giving two fundraising talks at Lynn's Green Quay. The first – town improvement – will be this Wednesday, and the second – town expansion – on Wednesday, June 18, both at 7pm. Tickets, priced £6, are available from the Green Quay.


• Copies of the book, priced £13.95, will be available at the talks and from bookshops and visitor attractions in Lynn.