Vanished Britain, as seen by peacetime RAF pilots
LONG BEFORE Google Earth, in an era when the net was still a curtain, they were the pictures that showed Britain to itself.
A remarkable collection of aerial photographs, taken as the country transitioned from war to peacetime, document a unique chapter in national life, when motorways and skyscrapers grew from the scars of the Blitz.
Taken by former RAF pilots on the instruction of the Cambridge archaeologist JK St Joseph, they are today being placed back into the public domain.
The Cambridge University project, which began in 1945, also took in ancient landscapes and eventually extended to some 500,000 images.
Cambridge archaeologist Prof Martin Millett, who has used the original photographs in his
...a historical Google Earth that lets you travel back through time. Cambridge archaeologist Prof Martin Millett.
research, said the collection had been world-leading in its day.
“Anyone can look at modern satellite imagery – but this is a historical Google Earth that lets you travel back through time to a Britain which no longer exists,” he said. “In this first batch, including some very early colour photography, we have cherrypicked some of the best and most beautiful images documenting the changing face of cities, towns and coastlines from the UK.”
The university borrowed RAF planes and pilots to take photographs until 1965 when it bought its own Cessna Skymaster. It then travelled the length and breadth of Britain to capture archaeological detail.
“In those days you could fly where you wanted with few restrictions and that’s exactly what they did,” said Oxford academic Dr Robert Bewley, who described the collection as “internationally important”.
The first images are online at cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk.