'Liverpool, 1859' - a birds eye view
lithograph, hand coloured by Vincent Brooks
Aerial Photographs - The Aircraft Manufacturing Co. Ltd
The first commercial aerial photography company in the UK was Aerofilms Ltd, founded by World War I veterans Francis Wills and Claude Graham White. The entire Aerofilms oblique collection, comprising some 1.26 million negatives and 2000 print albums, is now held in the archive of English Heritage The new Britain from Above website will be launched in 2012 with thousands of images online. The website will give you the opportunity to share and record your memories of the places shown and also to help us identify some of the locations and buildings. The project will finish at the end of 2014, and I quote.
Subsequently the Aircraft Manufacturing Co Ltd, later The De Havilland Aircraft Co Ltd, hired a DH9 along with pilot entrepreneur Alan Cobham to produce a series of postcards. Some of which are shown here.
For more information:
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/professional/archives-and-collections/nmr/archives/photographs/aerofilms/