Britain from Above: pins on 1919-1953 Aerofilms images as a free discovery and evidence route
Checked live 29 Oct 2026, 22:57Z. Run by Historic Environment Scotland with Historic England and RCAHMW. Images 1919-2006 (Aerofilms). Live counters: 96,344 images (Wales 4,321), 439,930 contributions, 131,988 members, 259 groups. Pins are still being added daily: the activity feed showed pins 8 hours and 1 day old.
Evidence
- Engagement model (RLUK paper, project's own write-up, read): users add memories, facts, photos and other media to images. Under 2% of images were unlocated, but the "help us identify" element was "particularly successful in retaining users". As of Oct 2014 the top 10 users made 50% of contributions (the usual 10%-do-most-of-the-work pattern, Holley 2010). The project ran 130+ face-to-face workshops through libraries and history centres. Its "Knit for Britain from Above" campaign drew women to a mostly male site.
- Tools (Help page, read): a free account gives "Add pin" (a comment and/or uploaded photo, placed on a point of the image), "Save to profile" and a free download for personal use only. Any other use means emailing [address kept in the project workspace] for a quote, so it is paid and needs a licence. Each pin has "Report as inappropriate" and can be edited or removed by its author.
- Our patch is covered and under-annotated (search, read):
- "Llandough" returns 3 obliques, WPW041277 / 041278 / 041279 (1933), "View of construction of Llandough Hospital, Penarth", NGR ST165730, Coflein Archive Item 6369767.
- WPW041278 has 8 pins (all 2013-2015) and 3 comments. They include "St Dochdwy's Church in Wales" (Llandough parish church), Penlan Road, Corbett Road and the Nurses Home.
- No pin names the manorial house, the farm or its fields.
- "Penarth" returns 49 images (1929 obliques and more). "Leckwith" returns 0.
- Rights: the images are HES/RCAHMW copyright. Coflein's non-commercial rule is already covered in heneb-her-archwilio-coflein-contribution-and-reuse.md. So these images can't go in a paid e-book or on a sales page without a bought licence.
How to do it (smallest useful version)
- Open a free account under the project's organisation name. Profile line: "Researching the history of Llandough and Leckwith; sources at cedwyn.bucklerfamily.estate". No personal names, no shop link.
- Study WPW041277-9 at full zoom. Only pin what you can identify from a dated map (OS 1:2500 Glamorgan XLVII.6 of about 1920, or the tithe map). Not checked yet whether the farmhouse or its yard is in frame. Confirm that first.
- Write each pin as one factual line with its source. Example shape: "Farmstead north-east of the church: Great House / Tŷ Mawr, former manorial house (OS 1:2500 1920 shows the buildings; later demolished)". Use no assertions language, no banned words, nothing about ownership or the court case, and no family names. One pin per feature, at most 3-5 per image.
- Add a comment (not a pin) only where you have a dated fact readers can use, such as when a building was demolished. Link to a free Cedwyn record page only if it answers the point. Never link to /ebooks/.
- Save the images to the profile, and create one Group, "Llandough & Leckwith from the air". Groups are the site's built-in collection page.
- Note every pin in a log with the image ref, the pin text, the date and its source.
How we apply it to Cedwyn
- Value 1, evidence: a 1933 oblique over ST165730 may show the farm's buildings and fields in the inter-war years, between the 1926 Cardiff Corporation deed and the 1938 WGR conveyance. That's directly useful to the parcel register (the project workspace). The image refs have been passed to the root for the parcel workers.
- Parcel: not identified until the frame is matched to the OS 1:2500 field numbers.
- Viewing and noting are free. Reproducing an image needs a licence quote from HES/RCAHMW, which is a PROPOSAL for the project lead and not spend.
- Value 2, discovery: pins are public, indexed text on a 132k-member site, read by exactly our audience: local-history people who know the area. A good pin plus a profile link is a credible, permanent mention that nobody else on the page is competing with.
- Rules: public text never names private people. Banned words apply (states, assertions, per, second-hand report, not checked, reported, deception, taken). Nothing about family holdings or addresses. Never upload images we don't hold copyright in. Contact no one at HES. Creating the account and posting pins is outward and permanent public text, so it needs the project lead's GO before the first pin. Draft the pins in HubSpot first.
- Measure / kill: count visits to Cedwyn with referrer britainfromabove.org.uk (GoatCounter/Cloudflare) at 30 and 90 days. If there are under 5 referred visits in 90 days, keep the evidence value and stop treating it as a marketing channel.
- Next: do the same for the 49 Penarth images (1929). Also check the RCAHMW Aerofilms search (rcahmw.gov.uk) for post-1953 frames of ST16 73 that Britain from Above doesn't carry.
Sources
- britainfromabove.org.uk (live counters, activity feed, read 29 Oct 2026)
- britainfromabove.org.uk (pins, profile, personal-use download, licensing via [address kept in the project workspace]; read)
- britainfromabove.org.uk and britainfromabove.org.uk (read)
- britainfromabove.org.uk (collection: 1.26M negatives, 1919-2006; read)
- rluk.ac.uk (engagement lessons; top-10 = 50% of contributions; 130+ workshops; read)
- rcahmw.gov.uk (Welsh Aerofilms holdings; snippet)
Raw Markdown: britain-from-above-aerofilms-pins-llandough.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json