Any service where "satellite view" historic aerial photos of the UK are available?

Posted by fatalicus@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 14 comments

Hi all! I was interested in seeing a bit about how London and some other areas in the UK have developed and was looking for any service that had aerial photos of the UK. Here in Norway we have https://norgeibilder.no which gives you a map of Norway, and when you zoom in enough you get a list of all aerial photos of that area, all the way back to the 1930s, and was hoping the UK had something similar. I have tryid to look and found the [aerial map explorer from Historic England](https://historicengland.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2626ed0c37484d96b8954dd33187084e), but that seems to only have single photos for areas. I did also find the georeferenced maps from the National Library of Scotland](https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/), but that was only for historic maps. But this one did have some very cool maps though. So anyone know a service more like Norge i Bilder for the UK?

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14 Comments

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Own-Violinist-6133@reddit

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/aerial-photos/

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fatalicus@reddit (OP)

That site i allready found, and isn't quite what i was hoping for, but thanks for the suggestion!

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foxhill_matt@reddit

[https://www.cambridgeairphotos.com/](https://www.cambridgeairphotos.com/)

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fatalicus@reddit (OP)

It lookgs like the Cambridge site is more like the Historic Englang site I found, meaning collection of singular images, but again like a site someone else suggested there are more here that isn't on the Historic England site, so definitly helps. The Geograph site looks like it is a collection of photos taken things in an area, and mostly from the ground and not very historic, but definitly fun to look through to see what people take pictures of in areas. Thanks!

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vaguebyname@reddit

Alot of local councils provide this, often goes back to pre war paper maps

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fatalicus@reddit (OP)

I might have to look into that a bit then. It could make sense that the UK, being more populus than Norway, could leave a task like collecting aerial photos of areas to the councils in that area, instead of having a larger government organ do a concerted effort for larger parts of the country, and so there might not be one large database of everything that has been photographed. Thanks for the suggestion!

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ukbot-nicolabot@reddit

[OP marked this as the best answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/1k7v2e8/any_service_where_satellite_view_historic_aerial/mp41fvh/), given by /u/Valuable-Fork-2211. > Google Earth does about the same here too but also includes aerial reconnaissance photos taken by the RAF in about 1945. The app version also has a timelapse feature where it'll automatically scroll through all of the images too. --- [_^(What is this?)_](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/jjrte1/askuk_hits_200k_new_feature_mark_an_answer/)

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Jlaw118@reddit

Google Earth (Not Maps) has this feature I use it quite often and it’s really good. Goes back to around 2002 in my local area

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Valuable-Fork-2211@reddit

Google Earth does about the same here too but also includes aerial reconnaissance photos taken by the RAF in about 1945. The app version also has a timelapse feature where it'll automatically scroll through all of the images too.

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fatalicus@reddit (OP)

!answer That tip about Google earth is definitly the closes so far! It is a bit of a shame that the gap is then from 1945 to 1985 (at least that i can see), and that 1985 is realy low quality, but doing comparisons from 1945 to 1999 and then further on should get me what i want :) Thanks! I'm marking that as the answer for now since it does what i want, even though i hope someone still knows about some site with more dates in it :)

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fatalicus@reddit (OP)

I was hoping for a bit longer into the past, hopefully with several setts to choose from all the way back to the first half of the 1900s when aerial surveys became a thing, but thanks for the suggestion!

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PipBin@reddit

There was something. I think it was called something like Britain from the air. I’ll have a look and come back.

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fatalicus@reddit (OP)

Hmm, it looks like this is something similar to the one I found from Historic England, meaning singular aerial photos of things, instead of a more continus photo of larger areas, but there does seem to be some more that isn't in the Historic England base, so if no one else comes up with something i might just have to settle for piecing things togeather from these :)

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