England's Motoring Heritage From The Air

The arrival of aerial photography came at a particularly significant moment in terms of the visual appearance of England. When Aerofilms fliers first went up in the skies in 1919, they captured a country that, with the obvious exception of some large scale structures, had more or less been preserved in aspic in 1914. What we are seeing in many of the early photographs are essentially Edwardian, with fields almost reaching the high streets in many cases, and little sign of the sprawl that was to engulf them in the 1920s and 30s.The purpose of this book is to show the radical changes that occurred over the ensuing 50 years. We trace the outward expansion of places brought about by the availability of the car. We see how new arterial roads came into being to meet the needs of motor transport and how the centre of cities start to be rebuilt to accommodate it. We see how public transport changes, from trams to buses, and the scale of traffic congestion becomes apparent by the late 1930s.