Everything a House Historian needs to know about the England’s Places Collection

28 Mar

In 1941, the National Buildings Record started the Architectural Red Box Collection to document historic buildings, especially for buildings threatened or damaged by bombing in WW2.

The collection was initially made up of photos collected by the Courtauld Institute in the 1930s. However, over the years that followed new images were added from commercial and amateur photographers, as well as from photos taken for the National Buildings Record. The collection was closed to new material in 1991.

The collection contains fascinating images of churches, high streets, village scenes , country houses and historic buildings taken from the 1850s until the 1990s. Subjects include churches and country houses, historic buildings and modern architecture.

The collection had been physically accessible at the Historic England Archive in Swindon. However, it was digitalised and released online to the public in 2015. Now you search the boxes by village, town or city virtually.

We explored Oxford Street and Regent Street in London to give you a flavour of what you can find in the collection. But I promise the collection covers many small towns and villages in just as much wonderful detail! The collection is free to search and view. You can also order copies of the images. Sadly you cannot share or embed these images directly(as with the Aerial Photograph explorer)- so I hope Historic England won’t mind the screenshots below!