Historic Aerial Photo Resources

I suspect the coverage will pre-date Pilton range ( (Bearshanks Wood) as the majority is probably 1938-1941 with a smattering of 1942-3. I don't know if there were any post 1943 as I think we had high altitude fighters by then. Also, and more likely, the coverage is bound to just miss the areas you want

I just stumbled across the Bristol mapping website:

maps.bristol.gov.uk/pinpoint/

It's map layers include 1946 aerial photographs ans a very interesting 1949 OS map at 1:2500 scale. The downside is that it only covers Bristol City but on the up side this does include Whitchurch aerodrome and Avonmouth Fuel Depot plus a number of AA sites.

Chris wrote:

Try www.kypwest.org.uk

Thanks. Only the Bristol City version has aerial photos from 1946 but it looks like it is still a work in progress so worth keeping an eye on.

I suspect they used the generic date when the national aerial photograph programme started and is actually a mixture of dates between 1944 and 1952 (dates on the sheets published by the OS in the early fifties).

Without a date-able feature it is difficult to be 100% sure what was taken when.

NCAP has released some more coverage of Bedfordshire. Of particular interest is the 1968 coverage which shows many of the airfields with a lot more concrete still intact, including Chelveston's runway.

There is also 1986 coverage and curiously Chicksands had been obscured by cutting and pasting a section from a nearby field - very obvious really.

As I write this the KMZ function doesn't seem to work on these new additions so searching for "HSL/UK/68" should bring up all the Hunting Surveys Ltd photos for that year which are mostly Bedfordshire at this stage. Changing the year will bring up the '86 ones or others years if available but coverage may not be limited to Bedfordshire

Just had a bit of a shock, my own fault for not reading the new price-list. My photocopies from Historic England (36 of them) now cost £1.65 a copy instead of the £0.35 last year (I think). That is a huge price hike to get just 4 photocopies that showed what I wanted! However, the old price I thought was too cheap for what they have to do but I would have thought £0.75 to £1.00 would have been better or perhaps a standard fixed charge for the service and reduced fee for each copy.

It seems that some services have been cut back as well because it has taken nearly two months from my original enquiry, twice as long as normal, although to be fair they did say a backlog meant I would have to wait 5 weeks.

A similar problem may be affecting the RAFM (Doris) as my request in October for some airfield plans has yet to bear fruit! Have both organisations had consultants/accountants in to "improve" things?

Hopefully the higher cost will not reduce income, which these things tend to do and more importantly I hope the money will be invested in improving service and online availability.

A bit alarming, Both NCAP and Britain from above are down! Both show "This site cannot be reached". I wasn't aware of any planned downtime. Shame as I had settled down for a Bofors session. BfA was down last night as well but NCAP wasn't. I know both are hosted by the same organisation.

As at 10:15 Wednesday 7 March 2018