Rare pictures of Thames floods in 1947 (top left), St Paul’s Cathedral in 1921 (right) and Blackpool Tower in 1920 (below left)  

  Old photographs of famous English landmarks have been made available on the Internet for the first time thanks to a major conservation project. 
  Striking and evocative, they chart a dramatic period of British history – from the end of the World War One to the year of the Queen’s Coronation.

  More than 15,000 pictures – many so old and fragile that they were close to becoming beyond repair – have been uploaded on to the Britain from Abovewebsite, which has just launched.
  It is the first batch of some 95,000 images, taken between 1919 and 1953, that are due to be put online in the next two years, showing the changing face of modern Britain.

The pictures come from one of the earliest and most significant collections of aerial photography.
Many shots were said to have been taken during the early days of aviation by former war pilots flying at very low altitudes.