Putting England's glorious heritage in the frame
12/09/2007
.jpg)
It started in October 1999, and now, 13,000 rolls of film later a totally unique snapshot of England’s listed buildings has been preserved for future generations in "Images of England" - an ambitious English Heritage initiative to create one of the UK’s largest on-line image libraries. The project, which received a major grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, is a point-in-time visual record of the country’s listed historic buildings taken over a seven-year period, and more than 300,000 monuments, structures and buildings across the country have been photographed by over 2,200 volunteers.
Comprising photos and details of over 80% of England’s listed buildings at the turn of the Millennium, Images of England has already become an invaluable resource for the enjoyment and understanding of England’s historic environment, and images range from stately homes and churches to lavatories and telephone boxes.
The images, although very recent, are already proving to be an extremely valuable addition to the English Heritage archive. In addition to natural phenomena, such as floods, gales and fire, building and development is also changing our historic environment - something which is most evident in the regeneration of our city centres. Often the only pictorial evidence of a building’s context in the landscape or function at the turn of the century will be the photograph taken for Images of England.
.jpg)
Nigel Clubb, Director of English Heritage’s National Monuments Record said: “The value of the archive will certainly grow and its relevance will really be appreciated by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren in years to come. This project’s success was largely thanks to the hard work and time put in by our volunteers. All passionate photographers, these enthusiastic men and women have trod, cycled and motored around their local area across the seasons. One particular volunteer travelled to all 34 of England’s counties while another clocked up hundreds of miles on his bicycle, taking pictures around London!”
One volunteer, Bob Cottrell (aged 74) has taken over 4,000 photos for the project and describes a typical day out photographing as generally involving him leaving home at 9am and returning between 6-7pm. Rather amusingly, he says his family sees his involvement with the project as proof of the lengths he’d take to avoid helping with domestic chores! He started working on ‘Images on England’ because he felt he'd "developed an affinity with buildings" during the course of his former job as a Contracts Manager travelling around the UK carrying out surveys and site measures.
Images of England's longest serving volunteer, Peter Holt (aged 72) has found the project a challenge at times, but has enjoyed every minute that he has worked on it. For him, the image that stands out most from the 500 or more photos that he has taken is Lock Cottage in Nottingham, which took him back to when he was a young boy. It was Peter's family home between 1935 and 1946, and seeing it again just brought back so many fond memories of his childhood. Other highlights include the Scala Cinema in Derbyshire, Britain's third oldest cinema, and Ye Olde Cinder Cottage, made entirely from cinder ash. Peter has said that one of the main reasons he got involved with the project was so his grandchildren could have something tangible to remember him by.
The website will provide an invaluable resource for many heritage and architecture affiniados but also for family historians. Those looking to trace their family trees now may be able to look up and view images of houses where their families once lived, schools where their ancestors once studied, and even churches where their grandparents got married. Other more unexpected listings include public lavatories, signal boxes, telephone kiosks and even the penguin pool at London Zoo.
Interesting findings from the project include:
- Images of England volunteers have travelled over 1.4 million miles to capture their images
- More than 6,300 miles have been travelled by bicycle
- Outside London, Bristol is the city with the most images featured on the website
- In the North of England, Liverpool leads the way with the most number of listings on the site, with Huddersfield a close second
- More than 55,000 people have already registered to use the website
- In the last 12 months visitors to the site have viewed over 7 millions images
The website is now available to view - click on the link below.