26 photos

In 2008 the owner of Dagnall Farm near Whipsnade Zoo sold some barns for development. We were given the opportunity to record the conversions from start to finish. The photographs were taken between April 2008 and August 2009.

203 photos in 17 sub-albums

In November 2013 a PhotoGroup member, Susan Tripp, suggested we should bring together in one album photos of all the churches in the Chilterns. I pondered the amount of work that would be involved and settled for a selection of the best of them. But who would dare to choose the best? We quickly realised that someone had already made a personal choice that had resulted in a best-selling book published in 1999: Simon Jenkins and his ‘England’s Thousand Best Churches’. Following his selection would save us a lot of time and we thought our pictures might well complement his text.

This was going to be a major project so we put together a team of members who were keen to contribute new photos of the Chiltern churches. The brief they had was to photograph the features that Jenkins thought were outstanding and warranted the churches’ inclusion in the book. They could also photograph anything else in or around the churches that appealed to them.

So throughout 2014 Michael Bowker, Don Collier, Roland Gillott, John Hockey, Keith Hoffmeister, Chris Howe, Dennis Jeffrey and Susan Tripp shared the workload and I am most grateful to them. I think we have indeed succeeded in adding value to the descriptions of Chiltern churches featured in England’s Thousand Best.

Quiller Barrett
Website Editor

Click here to see church locations on a map.

18 photos

A selection of outstanding heritage features in and around our local churches