Hello! Thanks to everyone who participated to the tidy-up last Sunday. A couple of us got distracted chatting about the history of the square and I thought it would be a good idea to start compiling a list of resources highlighting the rich heritage of our local area. I’ll make a start with a couple of sites that I came across at work at the London Metropolitan Archives. Please get in touch with your suggestions!
The London Picture Archive
https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk
Managed by London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), it provides free online access to over 250,000 images of London from the collections at LMA and Guildhall Art Gallery.
There are a number of different ways to search and browse the images on the London Picture Archive. Using the search box (or Advanced Search) is the best way to ensure that you see all of the images which might be relevant, but you can also browse a selection on The London Picture Map or use our subject categories. Try searches like “Wilton Square”, “Rosemary Branch”, “Regent’s Canal”, “Welsh Chapel”. Please note that not all of the LMA image collections are currently available here; there are around 2 million photos, prints, drawings and maps in the storage rooms.
The London Picture Map allows you to browse our collections geographically and it’s a great way to discover images of a particular street or building.
You can search the map by entering a term in the white search box. While you are browsing the map, it will load all of the image markers for the area visible in the frame. For example, if you zoom out to view the whole of the Greater London area, thousands of image markers will load, and this takes a few seconds. As you zoom in, fewer image markers are loaded and the process becomes quicker. Clicking on ‘Browse Results’ will show you all of the images which are on the map at that moment.
Layers of London
Layers of London brings together a really important collection of digitised historic maps, photos and crowd-sourced histories. The website allows you to interact with and contribute to many different ‘layers’ of London’s history from the Romans to the present day. These layers include: historic maps, old pictures of buildings, films, recordings, as well as stories about people who have lived and worked in London over the centuries. I particularly like the fade in and out function across the layers. Here’s what it looks like with the Bomb Damage layer.
Friends of Wilton Square 