A group of young people from Torbay have been given the opportunity to chart the changing face of Torbay’s coastline from 1919 to the present day.

The group worked with Torbay Libraries and the Heritage Lottery Funded project Britain from Above to carry out a local history project that connected the group with their local heritage.

Britain from Above is a four year heritage lottery funded project to conserve, digitise, catalogue and make available online 95,000 of the oldest and valuable aerial photographs of Britain in the Aerofilms Collection. These consist of photographs taken between 1919 and 1953.

A short film showing the groups contribution to this project will be premiered to the public at Paignton Library and Information Centre on Thursday 10 July 2014.

Councillor Dave Butt, Executive Lead for Culture and the Arts, said: “This has been an interesting project for the young people to get involved in. As well as seeing how our history is preserved they observed how Torbay’s coastline has changed over the years using aerial photos. This fascinating film that has been produced can be viewed all day and I would encourage residents to visit Paignton Library and Information Centre to see it.”

As part of this project, the young people were able to visit the Britain From Above project headquarters at the English Heritage Archive in Swindon to witness first-hand the process of archiving and preserving the images in the project’s collection. As well as uploading historic pictures of Torbay’s coast line from Torquay Library’s own local studies collections to www.britainfromabove.org.uk, the group took the project out on location to photograph places they had seen in archive shots to document the changing landscape and create a ‘before and after’ effect.

For more information on the Heritage Lottery Funded project visit www.britainfromabove.org.uk and they can also be found on Twitter at @AboveBritain #Aerofilms

Notes for editors

Photo of Paignton Harbour, Paignton Sands and the town, Paignton, from the east, 1947 (c) English Heritage (EAW007580)is available on request

Britain from Above is a four year Heritage Lottery funded project managed by English Heritage to conserve, digitise, catalogue and make available online the first 95,000 images of a unique collection of aerial photography, taken between 1919 and 1953. The collection comprises of over 1.2 million photographs in total, taken by the pioneering company Aerofilms Ltd between 1919 and 2006.

The images provide an unparalleled photographic history of Britain from the air in the twentieth century illustrating the enormous changes that have taken place in housing, leisure, industry, transport and agriculture and the physical impact of two World Wars. English Heritage works in partnership with the Royal Commissions on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales and Scotland to make those images freely available on www.britainfromabove.org.uk for all to see.

Notes for editors