Accessing original /old photos of my house / street

[asimon]

Hi all,

I'm interest in finding original/old photos of my house or houses on my street, I was looking at contacting my local council Croydon to see if they could assist, is this the best option or are there other avenues to obtain the above.

Regards

Allan

 

[TheForge]

It can be very difficult. The local planning department may have some if any applications were made in the past with accompanying photos. Your local records office might be able to help or one of the big private collections like Francis Frith might have one. Your local history society might be able to help.

 

[angrybird]

Hi allan
Try Ebay I have found a few old postcards of my house and village on there,remember to 'save your search' this lets you know via email when a picture/postcard is listed, it saves you having to look all the time.

Good luck with your search
Jacqueline

 

[Penners]

Have you tried just using Google?

Try the search function and the image search function - here's one site I found just by googling 'old photos London streets'

http://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/11/23/the-streets-of-old-london/

The search "historic photos south london' also produced a wealth of shots.

 

[Feltwell]

I've drawn a blank on this, despite much trying. There are pictures of the church in my road, from 1895 - looking exactly the same as it does now - and there's 1 picture that I've found of the brewery that was behind my house, looking very derelict, shortly before it was demolished in the 1960's.

As for the house itself, the best I've found is an aerial picture from the 1950's, and that's of a large area and lacks any meaningful detail. The only picture I've got of the house itself dates I think from the 1980's or 1990's, so not exactly old!

 

[asimon]

Thank you to everyone that have given there feedback so far

 

[plasticpigeon]

I have been lucky enough to find a couple of old books written by a local history society. As someone else has said, postcards are a good source. Also early ordonance survey maps are cheap and interesting, although there aren't usually photos.

 

[LadyArowana]

Aerial photos maybe available here http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/

And these people have 144 pictures listed under Croydon. http://www.francisfrith.com/croydon,surrey/photos/

 

[MatthewC]

I hope you have more luck than me. This house is opposite a very old church, has an interesting Victorian police station just two doors up, and on the other side the road leads to a pretty part of town. The result is that all photographers seem to have stood opposite my house and taken photos in three directions all of which ignored my house!

 

[parkview094]

There's quite an active facebook group for Croydon history called "Bygone Croydon". They also have a link here: http://www.bygonecroydon.com/

Might be worth checking!

...not from Purley are you by chance?

 

[Keithj]

I tried that with the village where I live. One of the first was me, outside the village pub. Embarrassing!

 

[Penners]

Presumably you just happened to be passing by the pub, Keith, on your way to give succour to the poor and needy?

 

[noj]

You could try http://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk for Croydon

It threw up a few of our cottage in Bromley from the 60's
http://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/...ernal/SearchResults&sp=Z226+Southborough+Lane

Seems a pretty random but extensive collection