I’ve always enjoyed photographing old churches, especially rural ones that I’ve stumbled across in Somerset (St Etheldreda in West Quantoxhead is my favourite so far). For a little while I’ve been meaning to get round to seeking out more churches and having a series of outings.
A couple of weeks ago I happened to learn about the Somerset Towers, which is a collection of medieval church towers in Somerset that are noted for their beauty. Having read about them and done a little homework, I’m interested in visiting and photographing every one of these towers. It’s quite an ambitious project – there are over 70 of these church towers and someone even made a map of them! I’ve certainly got my work cut out.
St Etheldreda is not one of the Somerset Towers but when I checked my archive of negatives I was delighted to find that I’ve already photographed one or two of the Towers.
I’m not even making it easy for myself photographically. I will take all the pictures using black & white film – preferably using my Horseman 980 view camera, and possibly a Mamiya RB67 medium format SLR where the view camera can’t go wide enough. In a real pinch, I could use a 35mm SLR.
It is likely to take months to take all the photographs but when I am done I plan to prepare a book. In the meantime, you can follow my progress on this blog using the tag Somerset Towers. No doubt I’ll post some of the pictures in due course! 🙂
Jonathan Gazeley 
Hi Jonathan is the book going to be an ebook or hard copy? Sounds interesting
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Hi, thanks for your interest! I haven’t really decided what format I will publish in. As I’m shooting the project on film I will definitely make prints in my darkroom to be bound into a hand-made album. I’ll scan the negatives in and prepare the publication electronically. Then it should be pretty easy to make hardback books and ebooks.
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