UK history photo finder
This tool allows you to search and view digitised historical photographs of the UK and Ireland. Starting with the Dixon-Scott collection, which holds more than 14,000 photographs taken in the 1920s-1940s, we will be adding new photographic resources in time. You can search by location and view images for free.
Get started with UK history photo finder.
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The importance of the Dixon-Scott collection lies in its comprehensive and candid portrait of life during the inter-war years.
The photographer J. Dixon-Scott spent much of his time touring the country taking tens of thousands of photographs of the landscapes, towns, and people. He was not only drawn to the rural ideal of the countryside and way of life but also to industrial townscapes and city scenes, capturing life amongst the buzz of the commercial centre, on the parade and the promenade, in the schools and universities, and at play on the sports field and golf course.
A collection of his work was purchased by the British Council and subsequently transferred to the Central Office of Information in 1948 after the latter purchased the British Council’s Photographic Department equipment and library. The collection is now held at The National Archives in the INF 9 record series.
Please let us know what you think by leaving your comments below. We’d like you to tell us:
- Do you find this tool useful?
- How would you use it for your research?
- What other TNA data would you like to see used in this way?
- How else would you use this technology?
- How do you think it could be improved?
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Just seeing this for the first time – looks interesting but haven’t had time to consider usefulness, however please insert ‘has’ on page ‘Dixon Scott photo finder’ second line after the word collection.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andrew D Devenney, IHR, U. of London. IHR, U. of London said: The UK history photo finder is very cool http://bit.ly/c7i4RP – more than 14,000 photos from 1920s to 1940s. [...]
doesn’t seem to work in firefox on a mac. works o.k. in safari though.
Excellent, can’t wait to see other local photo’s
Very useful although as with any resource, only as good as the indexing. For example a photo of Birmingham University from Bournbrook comes up under Birmingham, not Bournbrook, even though it’s closer to the latter than the city centre.
Also found a couple of location errors but that’s probably down to your data rather then the script. It’s working fine in Firefox on Windows 7 by the way.
Is the entire collection digitised yet? The company I work for have a fair amount of experience in this area and would love to be involved.
Wonderful – do we know the date of individual photographs?
I would suggest adding (or linking to) details on copyright or terms of usage for the images.
This is such a useful tool both for historical research and general interest. I like the ease of use.
It won’t work for me although I wish it would as it looks like a great idea. I tried several places and nothing happened with the search.
Thanks
I would endorse the view that this is useful for historical research and general interest and that it is easy to use.
I’ve always found it difficult to find my way readily around the main site — I love the ease of use of this and the fact that even when I nominate a starting point, I can still move around the map and look up whatever takes my fancy. Love it… cheers
This is wonderful. How precise is the geo-referencing? And have you considered a point of perspective to allow it work in combination with Streetview – the way envisioned by the HistoryPin project. These two projects (along with several others) just seem to be made to work together; and beg for ever more sophisticated mash-ups – with text, images, maps, audio, video etc.
Completely useless. I’ve typed in a place-name, up popped a dialogue box for me to choose options, but when I selected an option all that happened was a message “error on page”. Does this mean there is a problem with this part of the website? Or, if it is is meant to signify that no matching images were found, it would be better if, after selecting the option, there was a ’search now’ button, and (if there are no images held) a message came up to say ’sorry, no images matching your search term were found’, or something of the sort.
I could get neither the Photo Finder nor the Map Finder to work with Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7, but it was fine when I used Firefox.
No success here in South Wales – all I get for Newport and Cardiff is an OS map of Berwick-on-Tweed!
It will be great when it works.
M
This really doesn’t work. The map is really poor quality and not functional. I gave up before even coming across a photo! I was really interested when I heard of this. Now I’m just disappointed.
@Rosie @Nigel Neil
Thank you for your comments. This application is still in development and we are working to improve its functionality, our users’ feedback is invaluable to this process and informs our updates and improvements. We hope you try again and let us know what you think.
Very nice. Could really do with the ability to zoom out from London though rather than having to pan the country! Also looking forward to: (a) pictures of more obscure places; (b) older pictures; and (c) metadata for place, time etc. Links into the Flickr API for modern photos of places would also be cool!
Provide the year the photo was taken. Thought that was obvious. Without it, it’s almost useless and spoils what would have been a great idea.
Nicely functioning software (I am using Safari on a Mac). But 14,000 images is really a tiny collection. Quite a thin spread… of mainly rather bland images. Local collections (Leodis here) are so much richer in information.
@Yvonne Allison Thanks for your comments. We will be adding more photographic resources in time, the application is still in beta and our users’ feedback will play a key part in how it is developed and expanded.
Does not work with Internet Explorer v8 on Windows Vista
Nice idea but the mapping is a bit clunky.
It needs some other ways to search the archive by category etc and maybe include some contemporary public domain images of the same locations as an option.
If you want some help taking this to the next level ping us at http://www.geo.me
Really nice concept, though there seem to be a few browser issues on this (beta?) version.
A few people mention the idea of fusing archives with modern imagery – there’s a nice example of this at http://www.plaqueguide.com/, which pulls in Google StreetView, Panoramio, Wikipedia, etc.
Thanks for setting up a fascinating resource.
I’m not sure that the collection is either comprehensive or candid as JDS took very few photos of the industrial areas. The impression is of a middle class rural idyll, which is what his clients wanted (for examples of his work in context see the books he illustrated).
I was looking for old photographs of Skipwith, Wheldrake, Thorganby and Cottingwith, but all I got was a map of the area – a very pretty and comprehensive map which is very useful, but no photographs as promised. Was I doing something wrong? I am in Brisbane, Australia.
Sincerely
Yvonne
@Jack Harker
Thanks very much for your feedback. We will be adding more photographic resources, so please do check back in and let us know what you think.
Photofinder seems totally non functional
07/07/10) No map, no thumbnail images, just placeholders. It should be very interesting but I can’t make any sense of it today.
tried the photo finder, typed in Hull, got nothing, tried leeds, and then selected city centre, and got an OS map centred on berwich upon tweed – useless, not a photo in sight.
Great just a shame not a lot of photos of the area I’m interetsed in. Perhaps I missed it but is there a more detailed ref than IFN9 for each photo as I may want to explore them in more detail. When exiting from larger photo I think close button should be in top right in line with small pic and many other applications. Corx: photos of Cheam seem to include Wallington.
@Kath
Thank you for your comments, Kath. We will be adding more photographic resources in time. Also, this application is still in development, so our users’ feedback is key to improving and fine-tuning functionality. Thanks for the suggestions, and please do keep checking back for updates.
Used for first time today. Very easy to use, and found some photos I hadnt come across before. What a pity they weren’t dated. Very useful.
Great idea but can’t find the photos. Lots of empty boxes, then a map of Berwick – not useful when searching for Brighton
I could only get it to work if I looked at it in compatiblity mode; running IE8 and Windows 7. Tried looking up 3 places with success; However, one of the places searched (Barford St Martin, Wilts) showed 3 thumbnails on the map but told me there were 10 altogether. The other 7 turned out to be for Cranbrook in Kent; A check under Cranbrook, came up with 17 images, all which seemed to be correct.
Tried entering place name in box and using drop down but all that came up (eventually) was a map of Berwick!
Works well in Google Chrome/XP. Wish there were dates on the photos.
Think there may be problems with the site today as I can’t get the maps to load. Would really value the facility when it is running OK again.
Being a bit of a history buff, I found this site wonderful.
It’ll be great when the little problems are sorted.
Loved the fast loading of the map and photos. The search facility needs treaking though. A search for Wales just suggests the Milennium Stadium, Cardiff! (It does pan the country quickly though).
Didn’t like the way that all the previous photos looked at were shown again on different searches in different towns. Eg when looking at Blandford Forum, the photos from Swansea, Carmarthen and Solva (Wales) were shown again.
Also, it’s a pain after looking at say 25 photos, to get back to the 1st, you have to scroll back through each one previously looked at.
Is there a way for the general public to upload old photos or perhaps add info to existing ones via a comment box?
@Deborah Tilley
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, we are working to resolve the issue with the photo display. The photo finder application is still under active development, and while the public are not currently able to upload photos, or add information, it is a very good idea and something we’ll be taking a look at.
excellent project.
it give`s an idea how our ancestors lived at certain periods in they’re lives
Might be OK if I could get into it.Doesn’t respond.
Worked very well on Mac, using Safari. Looking forward to more images being added. As others have said, a date on the photos would be useful.
Veryeasy to use, I would like the dates on the photos if available. Surprising, the paces I looked at “the more it changes, the more it stays the same” Barry
Some really interesting photographs. For both family and social history purposes the addition of an approximate date would be an added bonus.
Absolutely useless! I tried the Valuation map finder, and the photo collection, typed in the place I wanted and ……nothing! Tried several times; all it said was ‘error on page’ Very disappointing.
Like some other above I only get a blank page. Entering a place name gives options to select and then nothing. Only saw a map briefly (Berwick) but when I finally got it to Bedfordshire there were no markers and no result with clicking on the map. Never saw the map again on subsequest tries.
I use IE8
Saw this for the first time today,can’t view the photo’s,is it because i’m on dail up or because i’m in Poland?
Kaz.
More precise location information would be nice. So would more information on the images, and the ability to combine text and location searches, but works fine for me, and a nice start.
Excellent resource. Only one complaint. The photos are not dated. One must guess at its vintage.
@Tamia Nelson @Alexander Clare @Michael Hallam
Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately, specific dates are not available for these photographs. However, we will be adding more photographic resources in time. Please check back in and let us know what you think.
I haven’t had long to look at it. I first found it odd to single click to open an image (a double re-closes it) and I have found one inaccurate location – clicking on Staplehurst, Kent opens photographs for Hawkhurst. But I have found a photograph of the church where my Grandmother was married, which has since been demolished. A potentially useful site.
@Graham
Thank you for your feedback. This application is still in development, and we are working to improve the functionality. Our users’ comments are key to this process.
I can’t make this work, It sounds a good idea. All I got was a pink square with lots of little tiny squares with a red cross in them. With a bit of clicking I did get map, but could not get any further, and then changed to a different location and got nothing at all. Needs some fine tuning.
Very useful and easy to use. It works in Firefox for me.
A zoom facility to enlarge the photographs would be very helpful.
error on page kept coming up. Tried London and fulham and hammersmith. No luck. Would like to know why this happens
thank you for asking for our opinion. I hope that it will work
It doesn’t matter what I type in I get a map of Berwick every time, no photos! I’m in Hampshire.
Looked promising but couldn’t find anything that was relevant for me at present but selected a few to view. Unfortunately the page froze and couldn’t go any further.
Cannot find any photos no matter what I type in the box. All I get is an OS map of Berwick.
Map locator only showed Berwick regardless of loction entered. What do markers look like? Nothing obvious on map to click on to get photos.
Using Windows XP & Explorer 8.
couldn’t make this work on Windows explorer
This behaves the same as the 1910 map finder. Actually selecting by moving the map to Yateley doesn’t appear to have any mark-up for photo positions. One wd have thought that the RMA Sandhurst wd have had a photo, if nothing else in the region.
Great idea but can’t get it to work using Internet Explorer. I put in a town, am asked to select an option and then nothing happens
Just tried accessing the site, could only get Berwick-on-Tweed on the map rather than the towns I wanted, and then only with a bit of ‘fiddling’, I certainly haven’t found any photos as yet!!
Could not find any photographs at all – has anyone seen any? Idea in principle is brilliant. Will return at a later date to see if things have improved.
Overall very good, but I found a problem.
Just to the North of Aylesbury, Bucks is an icon, which when clicked on says “Cirencester Gloucestershire”
Tried to access the site. Berwick on Tweed came up? not asked for. Tried to access various place names, nothing? You really do need to sort out this site.
Well, in fairness, that is what the National Archives is trying to do. It IS a Beta version after all and the whole point of asking our opinion is to do precisely that – sort out this site. It will be fantastic when the Alpha version is up and running.
Thanks for your comments, Deborah. User participation is invaluable in the development of our new applications, please do keep checking back to try out new iterations and developments.
Great idea, wish I could access the photos! Enter a town am asked to select an option and nothing happens. Map has only ever opened on Berwick-on-Tweed and can’t get any photos at all – looks like I’m not the only one!
I could not make this work. Tap in a place name (eg Blandford Forum) and the system took me to a map of Berwick. The ‘options’ things for alternative place names does not click through. Where are the symbols to see images, or am I just being dim !!
Useless. All I get is a map of Scotland no matter what name I type into the search box
I tried it because I take photos and put them on the geo-located site http://www.geograph.org.uk and thought I could take the modern equivalent of the historic view. I got an OS map of London and links to photo areas, and got the 21 photos of Ealing OK, but now I can’t get back into the map and links, and the search doesn’t work (I tried Ealing as I know there are photos)
It might be interesting if it worked. I tried typing ‘Edinburgh’ into the search box and it hung up. This happened in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, so it’s not a browser incompatibility.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to have to search by location, because that’s a good way to overlook interesting images in obscure locations. I would prefer to be able to start with a map indicating where there are photos, and then zoom in to see the places I am interested in.
Can’t get it to work at all – tried in both Firefox and Internet Explorer and nothing will load for me.
Can not get this to work in Firefox and win7 64 bit. I just get a blank screen after searching.
Doesnt work in IE, Chrome of Firefox. IE gives the error
“Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; Tablet PC 2.0; .NET4.0C; Creative AutoUpdate v1.40.01)
Timestamp: Sun, 1 Aug 2010 21:03:16 UTC
Message: ‘left’ is null or not an object
Line: 2778
Char: 73
Code: 0
URI: http://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/osmapapi/openspace.js?key=85EBEA79FC703A32E0405F0ACA601F58
”
Thats after typing in Newcastle
@michael
Thanks very much for the detailed feedback – there was a fault with the maps application which has now been rectified. Apologies for any inconvenience.
Tried this on three different browsers (explorer, firefox and chrome) and all I get is message pictures loading. I see no pictures and no map.
Thanks for your feedback. There was a fault with the maps application which has now been fixed. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Is there any way of flagging up errors in the placing of photos, I have found one so far that is about six or seven miles from where it should be and also on the wrong side of the subject! Otherwise, great site!
Thanks very much for checking out the site, and leaving feedback. The UK history photo finder application is still in beta, and we’re looking into how we can enable users to refine geo-references. Please do keep checking back and let us know what you think of developments.
It would be great if it worked – perhaps you can let me know when it is fixed.
I’ve just found that you need to have ‘compatability view’ turned on in Internet Explorer – the first time I’ve ever had to do this. I think you need to say this in big letters at the top of the main page.
I agree with Jonathan – there needs to be a way of correcting misplaced or incorrectly titled photos. I’ve found a few of these. It would also be useful to have an easy way of zooming in to see the detail on the photos.
Thanks for your comments. This application is still in development and we are investigating how users can refine geographic references. Please do keep checking back for updates.
I’m looking for pictures of Farncombe in Surrey, but this does not work for me. I’ve written the name several times but it tells me the spelling is wrong !! It won’t work with the postcode either. I followed the instructions but it just doesn’t work.
Thanks very much for your feedback. We are developing postcode search functionality and will be releasing this in the coming weeks. Please do check back and let us know what you think.
It is a shame that some pics are not shown anywhere near the place they depict.
For example the Dover Road photos, located in a large ‘blob’ at Bapchild near Sittingbourne, includes images of Shooters Hill (35 miles away), Dartford and Faversham, and just one of nearby Sittingbourne. Anyone looking for images of Faversham will see no blobs nearby on the map.
Thanks very much for your feedback. The photo finder application is still in development and we are currently investigating how we can enable it so our users can refine geographic references. Please do keep checking back for updates.
The map for “Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, TOWN” has a link just to the north of Aylesbury between Weedon and Aston Abbots, but when you click on it it shows photos of Cirencester in Gloucestershire!
Potentially very useful, but it doesn’t seem towork on my machine running Vista and IE8. The symbols are on the map (or what I take to be symbols) but clicking on them does nothing.
Further to my earlier posting about the inability to make the website work in IE8, tried Firefox and it worked a treat. Some absolutely splendid photos.
Photo DS.285/12 supposedly at Cobham, Kent, isn’t anywhere near it. I suspect that the first part of the caption gives the game away, “Stoke d’Abernon Church” – but the suffix “Cobham” has been added leading to the error.
Quite useful – but (from my point of view) would be better if there were more pictures from Norfolk.
Very nice to find pictures of places where my ancestors lived.
I agree with the suggestion that some reference to copyright issues could be given.
Is the National Archives aware of the website http://www.geograph.org? Its search facility is excellent, being able to pinpoint a precise location. Maybe a chat with the founder Barry Hunter could help the NA. Great concept – can’t wait for the alpha version.
Just to clarify – the geograph website is http://www.geograph.org.uk
Great idea! Looking forward to more photos being added. Sadly none for my ancestors on here yet – however, some lovely ones of Folkestone! Thank you :)
Yeh well if you stay north of Newcastle you can pretty well forget this. Very few Scottish photos and north of the river Forth – fporget it!
Perth and Dundee, both fairly important Scottish cities have absoloutely no photos.
Hi John,
thanks for trying out the application. We will be adding more photographic resources in time – the current range is limited to the Dixon-Scott collection – so please do check back later.
Great site. First visit and found some good pictures of villages which link in with my family history research. Will be following the development of the site with interest. Thank you.
I like the idea and the map is good with a fast refresh rate – It would be nice to have a map relevant to the date indicated on the photograph e.g. the new bridge being built at Hampton Court many of the roads and housing estates in Molesey didn’t exist – Cheers
Good idea but whenever i typed a town from the Isle of Wight site told me that nothing found, check spelling.gave up in the end
Hi Michael, thanks for trying out the application. The Dixon-Scott collection is limited in geographical coverage, but we will be adding more photographic resources in time. We hope you check back later on and find what you’re looking for!
I can only echo the comments of many others above that I simply cannot get the site to work on IE8 and Vista. There are no placemarkers on the map and the search box does nothing at all. I realise that it is Beta but what is the point of releasing a version that is useless on the most commonly used OS and browser?
Very useful as far as it goes. Hopefully more will be uploaded in due course.
Further to my post of August 15th I have now managed to access the site using Firefox and what do I find? Thousands of unidentified and undated photographs! And this from the National Archives!! It would be funny if it were not so pathetic.
Thanks for your comments John. We are aware of the issues in IE8 and they are being worked on – for now, the application will work in IE8 compatibility mode. We realise that this is far from ideal and thank you for your patience.
Unfortunately, there are no specific dates available for the contents of the Dixon-Scott collection. However, more photographic resources will be added as the photo finder application is further developed.
We hope you check back in future and let us know what you think of updates.
Nice app. I too wondered about dates – I realise from the replies that these are undated but I wonder if the preview pane could say from the Dixon-Scott collection, photos are undated but were taken during the 1920s and 1940s. Some could possibly be dated and it would be nice to be able to add it.
Excellent resource. My mother-in-law loved the memories the pictures of Plymouth brought back.
Lovely idea, though it doesnt seem to work on Windows XP . I was most dissappointd not to be able to access Waddesdon. Dated pics would be good.
I tried this on both Firefox and Explorer and couldn’t get it to work at all. My search term was Birmingham. I was offered options, and selected Birmingham, Birmingham, CITY. Then nothing happened.
I couldn’t get it to work either. No matter what I entered I got the map of Scotland, lol.
Absolutely useless. I searched on 4 seperate occasions for BRORA, SUTHERLAND, HORNSEY and LONDON. On SUTHERLAND, HORNSEY and LONDON I was given a choice of several containg that word but after making a selection absolutely nothing happened. After a while I decided to access the mapping symbols but on each occasion a totally unrelated map centered on Berwich Upon Tweed appeared. I gave up! Alos you might explain what the CAPTCHA code is. I missed it out first time and have had to retype all of this.
Great idea TNA but I think that it has been released too soon. As a librarian I think that the public should at the least be able to access the site in order to provide you with feedback. It appears that many including myself ended up with error messages and nothing to see. A short note about what is available would be helpful also.
I was having problems viewing the photos in IE8 with Windows XP but switched to compatability mode and it works perfectly now