Britain from Above

The Britain from Above project conserved 95,000 of the most significant images held in the Aerofilms collection - which numbers more than 1.2 million negatives and 2,000 albums. 

You can search the digitised images by keyword, place name, map or year and annotate photographs of places you recognise. It’s also possible to group a selection of related images or caption specific features on a photo. 

We hold the Aerofilms collection and run the Britain from Above website jointly with: 

• Historic England

• Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales 

Dating from 1919 to 2006, the total Aerofilms collection presents an unparalleled picture of the changing face of Britain in the 20th century. It includes the largest and most significant number of air photographs of Britain taken before 1939. 

The collection is varied and includes urban, suburban, rural, coastal and industrial scenes, providing important evidence for understanding and managing the built and natural environments. The collection was created by Aerofilms Ltd, a pioneering air survey company set up in 1919 by First World War veterans Francis Lewis Wills and Claude Grahame-White. In addition to Aerofilms’ own imagery, the firm expanded its holdings with the purchase of two smaller collections – AeroPictorial (1934-1960) and Airviews (1947-1991). 

This very large collection of historical air photographs was bought by Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), English Heritage (EH), and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW) from Blom ASA in 2007.