C. B. Newham FSA
Heritage documentarian, author, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Early Life and Education
Born on 12 August 1965 in South Yarra, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to Beth (born London, 1926) and Neville (Castlemaine, 1929–2022) Newham. He attended Camberwell Grammar School from 1970 to 1977, then relocated with his family to Perth, Western Australia, where he completed his education at Scotch College in 1983, focusing on Physics, Geography, Geology, and History. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Western Australia in 1987, majoring in Information Technology and Geography.
Career
His professional career began at Universal Defence Industries (later Australian Defence Industries) in March 1989, working as a software engineer. During this period he authored Learning the Bash Shell for O’Reilly Media, which remains in print in its third edition — a remarkable longevity for a technical book.
In 1996 he relocated to the United Kingdom, subsequently working in IT roles — permanent and contract — including at Nomura Research Institute, Macromedia, and the British Library.
The Parish Church Photographic Survey
Beginning in February 1997, Newham embarked on a systematic project to photograph the buildings documented in Pevsner’s Buildings of England series — likely the first person to undertake such documentation in digital format. This evolved into a comprehensive survey of rural parish churches, encompassing architecture, monuments, glass, brasses, fonts, hatchments, wall paintings, and furnishings. The archive now covers approximately 9,000 churches in some 500,000 images, representing the largest photographic archive of English church art and architecture in Europe. He has also conducted photogrammetric studies of several hundred monumental effigies, producing tens of thousands of additional close-detail photographs.
Digital Innovation
In 2013 he released Keyholder on the Google Play Store (subsequently expanded to Apple iOS) — a crowd-sourced platform enabling visitors to Church of England and Church in Wales churches to document their experiences through written accounts and photographs. App users have now visited over three-quarters of England and Wales’ 15,000 churches and photographed more than one-third of them.
Publications
His photographs have appeared in many publications, including works by Sally Badham and Toby Capwell.
- Country Church Monuments, C. B. Newham (Particular Books / Penguin Random House, 2022)
- Book of Effigies II, C. B. Newham (DAE Publishing, 2014)
- Book of Effigies, C. B. Newham (DAE Publishing, 2013)
- Some Old Devon Churches, vols 1 & 2, C. B. Newham (DAE Publishing, 2009)
- Royal Arms in Cornish Churches, C. B. Newham and Rosemary A. Pardoe (DAE Publishing, 2007)
- Learning the Bash Shell, Cameron Newham & Bill Rosenblatt (O’Reilly, 1993; 2nd ed. 1997; 3rd ed. 2005)
The Parish Church Photographic Survey 