Before the Covid pandemic struck, my friends and I, who are all Gloucester Rugby season ticket holders, would meet and socialise regularly, particularly before and after a home game at Kingsholm. This ended with the restrictions imposed by the Covid outbreak. At the conditional end of lockdown in May 2020, premiership rugby grounds remained closed and social distancing was still in place, together with strict guidelines on how we could meet with each other.

My friends and I wanted to start meeting regularly again and believed that we could remain safe and follow guidelines by meeting where there were few other people. We decided upon churches. The only criterion was that the church we visited must be in Gloucestershire. So, since May 2020, with a few exceptions, we have visited a different Gloucestershire church every week, and continue to do so. At the start of our visits the majority of the churches were closed to visitors; but now most are open to the public.

As well as visiting and photographing the church itself, we look out for headstones of armed services personnel erected by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and headstones of interesting people. For example, we’ve discovered that Michael Winters, half of the ‘Mike and Bernie Winters’ comedy duo, is buried at St. Mary’s Church, Edgeworth, and that Alfred Henry Hook VC, who participated in the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, dramatised in the film ‘Zulu’, is buried at St. Andrew’s Church, Churcham.

For our photographer visitors, the photos have been taken with either a Fuji X100F, Fuji X100VI, a Lumix TZ90, a Sony RX100 IV and a Sony RX100 VII; very occasionally an iPhone photo may have slipped in.

The galleries are arranged in chronological order with the latest at the beginning of the page. Each gallery is titled with the name of the church and the date of our visit.

I do hope that you enjoy browsing through the photographs of these beautiful, historic churches. If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch via the Contact page.