Saturday, December 02, 2017

1000 Years of London History


Layers of London wants to map the history of London from the time of the Romans right through to the modern day. That is a lot of history. So it needs your help.

Layers of London is already working with a number of partners, including the British Library, Historic England, The National Archives, London Metropolitan Archives and the Museum of London Archaeology. However it will also be crowd-sourcing content. Anyone who has an interesting historical story to tell about a place in London can pin their story to the Layers of London map.

Layers of London is for now in a beta phase of testing. Currently when you browse Layers of London you can view two historical maps of London on the map, the Morgan map (1682) and Roque map (1746). It is also possible to view some historical aerial photos of London captured by the RAF.

The historical notes are shown on the map using map markers. These historical notes can be filtered in two ways. You can use the timeline to explore London's history by date range. You can also select to view from a number of curated and public themed 'collections'. These collections allow you to browse London's history by theme, subject matter or from a particular institution or organization.

The timeline and themed 'collections' on Layers of London reminds me a little of History Pin. This crowd-sourced map of historical photos, videos, audio recordings and memories has proved hugely successful around the world. If Layers of London can also tap into this demand for local and personal history then it could also become a successful portal of crowd-sourced history.

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