Parish Churches
The Parish Church Photographic Survey archive, in your pocket or on your desk
Thirty years of fieldwork, made accessible
The Parish Churches app provides access to the survey archive across Android, iOS, and Windows and Mac desktop. It is designed for researchers, local historians, genealogists, and anyone with a serious interest in English parish churches, their contents, and the people associated with them.
The archive currently covers around 1,000 churches with some 53,000 images available in the app — approximately 10% of the full survey — with ongoing work to make the remainder accessible. Churches are searchable by county, place, and dedication. The subject database links churches to the people commemorated within them, to stained glass artists, sculptors, craftsmen, and others recorded in the buildings.
What the app contains
church browse
360 × 640 px
Browse and search churches
Navigate by county, by place, or by dedication. Each church record includes its grid reference, OS map position, dedication, and a full photographic record. The interactive map shows churches across England with coverage density at a glance.
A free tier gives full access to Rutland — one of England's smallest counties — allowing you to explore the app before subscribing.
monument detail
360 × 640 px
Subjects — people, monuments, and makers
The subject database links churches to those recorded within them: people commemorated on wall monuments, ledger stones, brasses, and memorial tablets; stained glass artists; sculptors and craftsmen; clergy and benefactors. Search by name, date, or parish, and trace connections across the database.
Subject records include biographical data, descriptions of the relevant memorial or work, and photographs. The database draws on primary sources within the buildings themselves — monuments, inscriptions, and other internal evidence — rather than on parish registers or transcribed records.
image gallery
360 × 640 px
Over 53,000 photographs — and growing
The majority of churches in the current database have photographic coverage of their exterior, interior, furnishings and fittings, monuments, and stained glass. Images are served from the survey archive at a resolution suited to screen use; the full high-resolution archive — typically 10–22 megapixels per image — is available for licensing.
All photographs are the copyright of C. B. Newham. See the fees page for image licensing and commissioned photography rates.
Subscription
The app is free to download. Without a subscription, basic information is available for all churches in England and Wales — including links to external resources such as A Church Near You, the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture, the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, and others. Full photographic and subject records from the survey archive require a subscription, with Rutland county available in full for free.