The region's past from above

A new website has been launched today and it reveals a view of our region which many of us won't have seen before. It's a collection of more than 15,000 aerial photographs of Britain .

The photos range from 1919 to 1953 ans many of them were so old they were close to being lost forever.

It's been put together by English Heritage and the Royal Commissions on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and Wales and features some of the oldest and most valuable images of the Aerofilms Collection, a unique and important archive of over a million aerial photographs.

There are some places on the Britain from Above website which have yet to be identify. Users are invited to identity these “mystery” images that have left the experts stumped.

Aerofilms Ltd was a pioneering air survey company set up by First World War veterans FL Wills and C Grahame-White in 1919, and made possible by the rapid technological advances made during the war in aeroplane engineering and aerial reconnaissance.

The photographs 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.

The collection was acquired by English Heritage, in partnership with the Royal Commissions on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and Scotland in 2007.