100-year-old aerial photo archive made available online for first time
Explore striking aerial shots of the south's landmarks and landscapes
Last updated 22nd Mar 2022
Aerial photos of landscapes and landmarks across the south taken over the past century have been made available online for the first time.
Historic England has launched an aerial photography tool which allows users to explore over 400,000 aerial photographs of the whole country.
The bird’s eye views range include Pilsdon Pen iron age hillfort in Dorset, Salisbury Cathedral, Southampton's medieval Bargate and Gatwick Airport in West Sussex.
The platform is set to be expanded, as more of the six million aerial images in Historic England's archive are digitised.
Around 300,000 of the photographs are the work of Historic England’s aerial investigation and mapping team, which was established in 1967.
The team takes photographs of England from the air to discover new archaeological sites, create archaeological maps and monitor the condition of historic sites.
The remaining 100,000 images come from the Historic England archive aerial photography collection, which includes wartime images from Aerofilms and the RAF.