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Early aerial photographs of Britain salvaged and published online

St Paul's Cathedral, London. March 1921. © English Heritage

Rare and fragile aerial photos of Britain have been salvaged, conserved and now published online.

More than 15,000 images from one of the earliest and most significant collections of aerial photography of the UK have been made freely accessible online to the public for the first time.

Britain from Above, a new website which launched today features some of the oldest and most valuable images of the Aerofilms Collection.

English Heritage and the Royal Commissions on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and Wales joined forces to publish this selection from the archive of more than 1m aerial photographs.

The photographs date from 1919 to 1953 and document the face of Britain during a period of intense and unparalleled change.

Restorers have gone through a painstaking process of conservation and cataloguing. Due to their age and fragility, many of the earliest plate glass negatives were close to being lost forever.

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