Scrutable

Historic England has put an archive of Aerial Photos online

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-b ... al-photos/

Rectangles seem to be RAF Aerial Survey images
Stars seem to older photos
Dots seem to be more recent aerial photographs

Might be of interest.

Gfamily wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 23, 2022 11:21 pm

Might be of interest.

Thanks for that. By chance there is an aerial photo of where I live from 1945. There are various things I wasn't anticipating.

I know that my house was built in 1938, and I thought it was the first house to be built in my road. I had assumed that nothing else would have been built until after the war. But I see quite a few houses already in 1945, at least 1/4 of what is now here.

Also there is a short row of buildings in the field behind my house, running along a track that is now a public footpath. I wonder if those were WW2 prefabs.

The house-building land in my road was assigned to the Metropolitan Railway Company early in the 20th century, separated from extensive agricultural land that was previously owned by an almshouse. This is all detailed in my very fat property deeds. The purpose of this was both to help MRC to earn money to pay for the railway construction, and to deliver the commuters to ride on the railway. Though it's quite a walk to the station - and in part along a narrow lane with no footway or lighting and blind bends. I go on a bicycle. We also see it was a very long time after the railway was built and the land assigned that the houses got built.*

They divided it into 3 kinds of plot:

Self-build plots - you bought the plot and a selection of designs for self-build. This is what my house was, though now much extended. These were generally detached 2-bed bungalows, though next door (still occupied by the wife of the man who self-built it in the 1960s, who died only about 3 or 4 years ago) has a small third bedroom squeezed in. I suppose this is why my house was built with solid walls, it was easier to implement by an amateur brick-layer.

Houses the MRC built itself. These are like better-class council houses, generally ugly 3-bed semis. I see a row of these was already built in 1945. They are all owner-occupier today, but I wonder if originally they were rented out.

Developer plots. These have generally had 3 or 4-bed detached houses put on initially, and are individual developed - there's no uniformity to them.

*Interestingly I'm currently reviewing a near-finished study with many case studies of railway developments where there was supposed to be related development. I was particularly entertained to discover the abandoned attempt to build the new Spanish commuter town of Valdeluz that was supposed to be built nearly 20 years ago now around Guadalajara AVE station. On Google Earth you can find this entire network of paved roads to lay out a 30,000 people town, with nothing there along most of them. There's only 3,500 people there now. And Guadalajara AVE station has the passenger traffic you'd expect at a small rural station, not a commuter town or Intercity destination - I guess most people wanting to go to/from Guadalajara use the old rail station in the city.

Thanks from me too.

I knew our house is on the site of a previous secondary school and before that a kind of holiday camp for poorer city kids to get a bit of country air, but I was surprised to see a 1960 photo showing the camp huts still there and the school not built yet. I know the school was gone by the end of the '80s when the houses went up so it can only have been there for 25 years or so.

I found out that the woods that I used to play in was just 10 - 20 trees in 1945.

This might also be of interest, it's a side by side map viewer of GB from the National Library of Scotland

Old OS Maps from different periods can be compared with up to date maps and 'satellite' views
Begins here at Stonehenge
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by ... ht=BingHyb

Very strange (great link btw GFamily) but our house doesn't appear on the OS maps until about 1940 - even though our house was built in 1903.

Gfamily wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 24, 2022 6:57 pm

This might also be of interest, it's a side by side map viewer of GB from the National Library of Scotland

Old OS Maps from different periods can be compared with up to date maps and 'satellite' views
Begins here at Stonehenge
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by ... ht=BingHyb

Saved me from posting that. It's a brilliant resource, as is the aerial photography one, thanks.

Gfamily wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 24, 2022 6:57 pm

This might also be of interest, it's a side by side map viewer of GB from the National Library of Scotland

Old OS Maps from different periods can be compared with up to date maps and 'satellite' views
Begins here at Stonehenge
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by ... ht=BingHyb

Here is a similar site for Dutch maps: topotijdreis.nl
It recently was updated to allow side by side comparisons.

Gfamily wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 24, 2022 6:57 pm

This might also be of interest, it's a side by side map viewer of GB from the National Library of Scotland

Old OS Maps from different periods can be compared with up to date maps and 'satellite' views
Begins here at Stonehenge
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by ... ht=BingHyb

They have 60" (yes 1:1056) maps of parts of some Victorian cities

This is also a good site (again starting at Stonehenge)
https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/Wiltsh ... &scale_to=

Zoom in and out and the panel on the right will show what maps are available, scroll within the panel on the right and you'll see older maps; firstly, older OS Maps, then County Maps and where they exist, even older ones.

Select a map, and it can be opened and zoomed.
Includes worldwide maps, where available anyway

I sent this to Dad, and before he'd opened it, he'd forwarded an email from his neighbours with a link to a 1946 photo of his area

Speaking to Dad on the phone just now, he says that when he was looking at the coastal grazing marshes and farming regimens for encouraging birds in the late 1980s/early 1990s the aerial photos they were using had been taken by the Luftwaffe during the war.

This is brilliant, thanks Gfamily.

Oddly, there is nothing at all for the village where I grew up but a huge amount for the teeny tiny village up the road. There's a highly-photogenic windmill there so all the photos of that make sense but masses of others too, including lots of RAF ones which puzzles me as I'm not aware of any reason for it.

Where I live now, there are lots of RAF ones which is entirely expected as we still have a small RAF base just up the road - close enough that we can hear their regular target practice pretty clearly. I can see that where our road is was all fields in 1954 - which is as expected as the houses were built in the 60s. You can clearly see, though, which small fields were sold to be built on at that time, which larger one (complete with trees that we know to have been an orchard) later became the larger group of houses/mini estate that is past the end of our gardens, and which field remained to become the publicly owned meadow that you can access from the end of our road.

Gfamily wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 23, 2022 11:21 pm

Historic England has put an archive of Aerial Photos online

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-b ... al-photos/

Rectangles seem to be RAF Aerial Survey images
Stars seem to older photos
Dots seem to be more recent aerial photographs

Might be of interest.

Hmm. There doesn't appear to be anything there now.

Rich Scopie wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:43 am

Hmm. There doesn't appear to be anything there now.

Still working for me. Might be device dependent.

Rich Scopie wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:43 am

Gfamily wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 23, 2022 11:21 pm

Historic England has put an archive of Aerial Photos online

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-b ... al-photos/

Rectangles seem to be RAF Aerial Survey images
Stars seem to older photos
Dots seem to be more recent aerial photographs

Might be of interest.

Hmm. There doesn't appear to be anything there now.

I had to refresh the page.

Thanks guys - it seems to have been a temporary blip. Got it now.