Pay our history a flying visit
A huge archive of historic aerial photographs is offering a bird's-eye view of how our city and countryside used to look.
Nearly 100,000 aerial images of Britain have been put online by English Heritage.
Many were taken in the early decades of the last century.
Some are shown here alongside colour snapshots of Leicestershire from the first years of this century, taken by Leicester Mercury photographers.
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Leicester Civic Society chairman Stuart Bailey urged people to study the photographs and said they would help people "appreciate how much green open space we have lost in the city".
"Much of it has been cluttered by buildings of dubious merit," he said.
"Once again, it emphasises the argument that it is better to build on brown or previously developed sites."
The images can be seen on the Britain from Above website launched this month.
It features images from a collection created by Aerofilms Ltd, a pioneering air survey company set up by First World War veterans FL Wills and C Grahame-White in 1919.
The basic collection was expanded by buying the AeroPictorial collection taken between 1934 and 1960 and others collected by Airviews between 1947 and 1991.
A spokesman for English Heritage said: "This very large collection of historical air photographs was bought by English Heritage in 2007.
"The website will give people the opportunity to share and record memories of the places shown and also to help us identify some of the locations and buildings."
To view the English Heritage images, visit:
www.britainfromabove.org.uk
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