About

Yorkley Press (formerly ‘Yorkley A&E’) is a community publishing group based in the village of Yorkley in the Forest of Dean. 

We publish books on topics of local interest, from histories of Forest people and places to anthologies of poetry by contemporary Dean writers. We are strictly non-profit-making, and any money we make goes back into funding future publishing projects.

All our recent titles are available to buy from our website. You can also find them in the Chepstow Bookshop and in local libraries. 

Some of our earlier titles will soon be available as free downloads. See our website for details.

Our story

The story of Yorkley Press goes back to 2010 when two local residents, ex-journalist and lecturer David Adams and retired GP Chris Nancollas, teamed up to give a talk at the Yorkley Festival about the poet F. W. Harvey, who had lived in the village. It was a subject particularly close to David’s heart: his father, the Fleet Street journalist Ivon Adams, had been a friend of Harvey’s, and David himself had had a lifelong interest in Harvey’s work.

The success of the talk led on to other projects. Soon Chris and David were joined by poet Maggie Clutterbuck and history teacher Clare Ham, and found themselves part of a small group of enthusiasts producing slim volumes on literary and historical themes to sell at the local post office. The first, Remembered and Forgotten: The Last Century in a Forest Village, was a collection of reminiscences about life in Yorkley to mark the centenary of the Yorkley Institute. This was followed by A Native Forester, a study of the life and times of Richard Morse, a largely forgotten Forest poet who was born and lived in Yorkley more than two hundred years ago. Both books sold out almost straight away and had to be reprinted.