Gloucester 500 is the pet project of @ShadowedEyes, a photography enthusiast based in the city. It began when the Covid-19 pandemic restricted our horizons to within walking distance from home and the discovery that what appeared to be a fairly nondescript post-war suburb had a history that stretched back to the late Bronze Age and that some of the old properties that have survived the tide of Gloucester's urbanisation are listed by Historic England.

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It turns out that Historic England lists nearly 500 sites in Gloucester, and the city enjoys a higher than average proportion of grade I and grade II* listings. Gloucester 500 is a long-term project to photograph all of them.

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As of May 2020 there are actually 485 sites, but this may change over time, some additional sites can be found in the Gloucester postal district but technically not inside the city limits, and anyway 500 makes for a snappier title.

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Of that number, 35 are listed at grade I, 50 at grade II* and 378 at grade II. They range in size and grandeur from the near thousand-year-old cathedral to 16th-century or later farmhouses which have survived the tide of urbanisation that has swept around them as Gloucester grew.

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The remaining 22 sites are listed as scheduled monuments. In Gloucester, some of these scheduled monuments are historic sites – such as Glevum Roman Colonia, distributed within the original Roman city walls and now covered by shops – for which there is little left to photograph.

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As of July 2021, some 300 sites have been photographed (though there are cases, particularly in the city, where multiple sites appear in a single image).

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A public Facebook group – Gloucester 500 – has been set up, and everyone is welcome to follow and join in.