The impact of the Blitz on Wapping in aerial photos

One of the things in my backlog of blog is to try and collate a decent database of all of the historic photos of Wapping available of the web. Last night, I watched a little of a repeat of Andrew Marr's Britain from Above which used aerial photography to show the impact of the Blitz on London and this gave me a kick up the arse (albeit whilst I was on my beanbag). I can't muster the energy to get on with my project, but I can at least share some great photos hosted elsewhere.

There's about 50 or so photos of Wapping some of which you can see from visiting this link, though if you try different search criteria some more come up (the link is a search based on a 1km search radius, but may exclude photos where the geotagging is just outside the radius but includes Wapping in the description (try also searching for Shadwell and St George in the East). Photos are constantly being updated, so hopefully a few more of Wapping post war will pop up.

I've included a few pre and post War comparisons - if you click on the photos they should enlarge - however if you follow the link above the applet on the website lets you zoom in to much greater detail. I was amazed by how densely packed in everything was - on the website you'll see crystal clear images of the old gas works, the workhouse, the warehouses and much more.

In the photos below see the destruction of the eastern warehouses at St Kats, part of the Tobacco warehouses where Reardon Street is and a few riverside warehouses (in the penultimate photo notice the lack of roof on Colonial Wharf).