Mick Hartley

Collage is a massive database of over 150,000 London photos and pictures, set out on a map. 

[Piccadilly Circus, ca 1949. Chalmers Butterfield. Wikimedia/Creative Commons]

Launched last week, it allows you to trace London’s visual history street by street. Supported by the City of London Corporation, it’s the result of two full years of digitizing and mapping images from the London Metropolitan Archive and the Guildhall Art Gallery, which together possess the largest collection of London images in the world.

You can search by area, or just zoom in and click on a link. Includes popular searches (pubs, churches and chapels, coffee houses…) and galleries (Great Fire of London, Tower Bridge, London on canvas…). Hours of fun for all the family.

More from the Smithsonian; the Guardian.

Mind you, it's not 100% reliable. I searched my local area – as you do – and was surprised, if not deeply moved, to find a house once occupied by noted opera singer Dame Clara Butt, in Hanley Road, N4. The photo, taken as recently as 1983, shows a house that very clearly doesn't belong on Hanley Road. A brief google search reveals the true location for this: Harley Road, in Swiss Cottage – a far more likely destination for such a diva.

Still, teething troubles etc…..