IT took the woman quite by surprise. There, back in town, was good old Jack Moeran - someone she had not seen for a long, long time.

She made to cross over to talk to him but was amazed when he raised his hand, like a policeman on traffic duty, and stopped her in her tracks. The woman turned away, very hurt, and determined to tell Esther Moeran about her son's offensive behaviour.

That encounter with the composer Moeran in Ledbury at about 4 pm on December 1, 1950, was even stranger than she realised. For at that same moment his body was being brought ashore from the waters of Kenmare River in Southern Ireland. He had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage following a heart attack.

He has now been dead for over half-a-century but a writer who regards him as 'the last of the true Romantics' is striving to ensure that the great man's memory and music lives on. He is Barry Marsh whose biography of EJ Moeran 'My Friends Call Me Jack' is in preparation and will include details of the composer's Herefordshire years.

Moeran lived in Kington for some time and Marsh once wrote: "From the summit of Great Rhos Moeran would proudly point towards Housman Country or Elgar Country. Today we might add... and here is Moeran Country."

Moeran's brother, Graham, followed their father into the priesthood and by 1937 he was vicar of Leominster (later he became Rector at Ledbury). He bought 'Gravel Hill' at Kington for their parents and from 1941 Jack spent much of his time there.

Barry Marsh interviewed a woman called Maud Parry and gained an interesting insight into the Kington sojourn.

She related: "Breakfast time was at nine o'clock and he always had it with his parents. The rest of the day he was in his study. I had to finish everything before Mr Jack started on his composing. The whole house had to be silent. Mrs Moeran told us 'No one must make a noise or any sound'.

"Salads replaced hot meals because the cook, Jessie, was not allowed to open the oven door. After long silences the piano would suddenly be heard. It flowed from that study - liked the rippling of a stream. Sometimes it would be like the rustling of the trees; another time it would be like he was going for the sound of the birds."

And when the maids took in a tray: "He'd be in a world of his own.....the piano was on the left hand side; he had his desk with all his stuff on it and there was one window - he was right under it when he was composing. He'd do something, then he'd put the paper on one side, throwing the music across, as if he was sorting out what he didn't want on one side, and what he was going to try out the other side. He had half a dozen wastepaper baskets, all full up, but nobody dared empty them."

Enthuses Barry Marsh: "From this small room, in four years, came music that sprang from the surrounding hills and mountains - the Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra, the Overture to a Masque, first ideas for the Cello Sonata and part of the Cello Concerto.

"There was one other work - the Sinfonietta, Moeran's Symphony of the Welsh Marches, in which he aspired to greatness and achieved it."

At 'Gravel Hill', if anyone interrupted a radio concert that Jack was listening to, he would quickly put up his hand and silence the offender. Hence the spooky apparition destined for Ledbury?

It was at St Mary's Church, Kington, on July 26, 1945, that Jack Moeran married Peers Coetmore, the cellist.

Once there had been an image of Moeran, embarking on one of his beloved walks and returning, relaxed, smiling contentedly, sometimes whistling softly, enthusing openly about the wonderful air of Kington - 'the healthiest place in the British Isles!'

But within two years of the happy day at St Mary's Church the marriage was in trouble for a variety of reasons and Jack indulged in drinking bouts. He became terribly depressed and no longer had faith in himself as a composer.

By 1950 he was dead, but there was a rich legacy of music and, and as Barry Marsh reveals, a record of the happy times with Peers.

In 1943, for example, he had written: "My dearest Peers, at Kington I can go into the pastures or up the hill and somehow feel that you are there with me in a telepathic way. Don't forget to think of me up on Bradnor planning out my music."