A selection of more than 200 photos of the modern high street, taken by members of the public, have entered the Historic England Archives today.
Available to explore online, a selection of 204 photos have been submitted by amateur photographers.
The photographs are part of Historic England’s Picturing High Streets project, which included an online national call out on Instagram for photos of everything from bus stops to ‘ghost signs’.
Historic England asks public to hunt country’s ‘ghost signs’
There will be a further 173 images by resident artists based across England added to the archive, taken as part of local Picturing High Streets projects.
Last year, photographs from the public and artists toured across towns and cities in England, forming projections at Soho Photography Quarter and displayed in Derby, Bristol, Hastings, Middlesbrough, Prescot, Norwich, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent and Walsall. The exhibition reached over 1.1 million people in these towns.
The Picturing High Streets call out and exhibition marks the final year of the programme, and the £95 million High Streets Heritage Action Zones Programme which was created to help revitalise around 60 high streets across England.
Duncan Wilson, Historic England Chief Executive called the new national collection “a truly brilliant historic record of high streets today for generations to come.”
