Forgotten Churches: Exploring England’s Hidden Treasures

Spending his weekends exploring historic churches across the idyllic English countryside - and sharing their beauty and unsung history across social media - Luke Sherlock is bringing English history and the heritage of our rural countryside to a new audience.

England is full of incredible churches, from small stone chapels and quiet Romanesque masterpieces, to thousand-year-old Saxon stalwarts, dramatic Gothic monuments and high Victorian treasures. These special places, often under-celebrated and overlooked, dot the English landscape but collectively tell a remarkable story of our nation.

Travelling to all corners of England - from the Kent marshlands to the Norfolk fens, Yorkshire hills, Somerset lanes and beyond - Sherlock carefully documents these unique buildings, celebrating their histories and decoding their hidden meanings. Bringing together 70 of the most unusual, intriguing and atmospheric of England’s churches, Sherlock tells stories of craftsmanship and local community, whilst centering these buildings at the heart of our national story and revealing their forgotten secrets and cultural significance.

I’m Luke Sherlock, writer, pilgrim, and environmentalist with a boundless enthusiasm for heritage and art. There’s little I enjoy more than throwing on a backpack, heading off down some unknown footpath and pausing to explore a hushed, ancient church along the way. My mission is to share these journeys so we can better know, value and care for our historic landmarks and the landscapes they sit within, whilst hopefully inspiring others to find some meaning through their own discoveries.