SUE ROSS PUSHES OPEN an office door and stands back while I take in the wall of words in front of us. Stacked from floor to ceiling is the complete range of Shire books: every edition of every one of the 1,000 or so books that it has published over the past half-century.

In alphabetical order, from The AA to Writing Antiques (about vintage pens and pencils), they pack 80ft of shelf space. Ross, the sales manager for 30 years, pulls out titles at random: Firefighting Equipment; The English Rococo Garden; Cash Carriers in Shops; Duck Decoys; The Victorian Chemist and Druggist; Shell Houses and Grottoes; The Salt Industry. As she says: “Shire publishes books on subjects that no one else would publish books on.”

The company, officially called Shire Publications, has always been a reassuringly English institution, seeped in “heritage”. It belongs to the world of collectors' fairs, country shows, local history conventions, re-enactment weekends and vintage transport rallies. Its regular customers probably subscribe to Reader's Digest, watch Antiques Roadshow and are long-time members of the National Trust. They may even make corn dollies. Things, however, are changing.

Since Shire's launch in 1962, its compact books have been a staple feature of display carousels in museums, country houses and tourist information centres. They have come into their own as cheap souvenirs of Bank Holiday excursions, at the very least offering solid, informative reads.

The range is amazing: British Tea and Coffee Cups, 1745-1940; The London Taxi; The Archaeology of Rabbit Warrens; Post-Medieval Pottery, 1650-1800; Romano-British Coin Hoards...a lifetime of Mastermind specialist subjects between soft covers.

Until last year, Shire was based at the 17th-century Buckinghamshire home of its founder John Rotheroe. “He worked out of the main bedroom and I worked out of the dining room,” Ross says. “The books used to be packed in the kitchen. There were six of us doing everything from publishing to dispatch. I took my dog to work and it sat under my desk. People liked the quaintness of it, the cottage industry aspect.”

Last year, however, Rotheroe sold the company to Osprey Publishing, a specialist in military history books, and the operation was moved to bright, modern offices in a business park off the Oxford ring road. The new working environment is quiet and efficient-looking, with mainly young staff closely focused on their computers. Quaint it is not.

Shire has been radically relaunched. Its marketing and distribution have been updated, turning more to shops and the internet, and its books have been given facelifts. New titles have trimmer formats and “branded” covers with clean typefaces, attractive photographs and vintage commercial design.

Some reprints retain their original quirky covers for their retro appeal (Shakespeare eyeballing a London bobby on a walks book; a headless coachman driving a spectral coach on a ghosts book), but most are being dressed in crisp new designer clothes and given a fresher look.

Dyed-in-the-wool Shire collectors may feel that some of the old cosiness, the innocent charm, has gone, but the books now look interesting and authoritative rather than just homely.

Lured by the new look, I sample three recent titles: Allotments, The Victorian Asylum and The British Soldier of the First World War. Their classy layout gets me reading, and they prove unexpectedly absorbing. I discover a new interest in the role of Anderson shelters in postwar allotments policy and the differences between asylums' “Refractory” and “Moderately Tranquil” wards. I can hardly wait for Old Radio Sets and The VW Camper Van.

Shire says it aims to “reflect the interests of ordinary people, however unusual or obscure their passions might be”. The resulting books are pocket celebrations of enthusiasm, erudition and eccentricity, pitched somewhere between the academic expert and the weekend hobbyist.

“A very big part of the appeal is nostalgia,” Nick Wright, the company's new publisher, says. “And, as people get older, nostalgia gets more and more modern.” Hence the retro covers.

Most new titles have print runs of between 2,000 and 4,000, but some have done spectacularly better than that. Discovering Hallmarks on English Silver has sold 210,000 copies since the early Seventies, followed by Thimbles and Thimble Cases (120,000 since 1982) and Discovering Timber-framed Buildings (110,000 since 1978).

And the less successful titles? “Well, Dummy Boards and Chimney Boards never did brilliantly well,” Wright says. “But for the dummy board enthusiast it's a godsend.” (For those who don't know their dummy boards from their chimney boards, the book is still in print at £4.99).

Authors, he says, need to be highly disciplined. “They need to strike a critical balance between academic rigour and readability. The ideal author has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject and can compress it into 10,000 words.” Sue Ross backs him: “There's no flannel. They're as tight as you can possibly get them. They're written for the layman, but not written down to the layman. The aim has been to get all this stuff on paper before it disappears. Some of our authors are now dead, but they put all their knowledge in their books. And we always say that if you know the Shire list, you can go to a party and talk on any subject.”

She is proud of Protheroe's achievement. “He wanted books on the list because there wasn't anything else on the subject. That was our niche. But we had some ideas put forward that never saw the light of day. I remember one called Discovering Tattoos. And Bible Suicides. And Sick Bags. We never did Sick Bags.”

Allotments by Twigs Way
The British Soldier of the First World War by Peter Doyle
The Victorian Asylum by Sarah Rutherford
All available from Shire Publications, £5.99; 56pp

Times Recommends

• Sarah Palin and the Palindromes: 7 extraordinary connections
• Physics for Future Presidents: The Podcasts
• 10 Books Not To Read Before You Die