The three churches, all built with flint, are at Laxfield, Walberswick and Stoke-by-Nayland. Piper drew them while staying nearby at Aldeburgh, rehearsing a Monteverdi opera he had designed for the Aldeburgh Festival.

Piper had worked with John Betjeman since before the war on the Shell County Guides, encouraging interest in the architecture of parish churches, which they discovered and described. These drawings were framed together by Piper, who often combined such buildings, sometimes in the same print or design. They were used, along with a fourth drawing of Eye church tower, as an endpaper for the Shell Guide to Suffolk 1960.