Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery

Website Historypin is all about digging out those old photos and letting them be appreciated by others, while at the same time helping to tell the story of your local area for generations to come. The short video tour on YouTube describes it all perfectly.

The site lets you search by location and/or time period via a timeline, and the site cleverly layers photos on top of Google Street View images, creating the effect of holding up an old photo in front of the view today - a technique recently made cool by the Flickr group 'Looking into the past'. The feature is still in its infancy though, so don't get too critical of the exact placement of some of our images.

By far the most popular use of History Pin so far is capturing major historic events, most notably images of the war. What Brockley Central has attempted, in our modest and eclectic contribution to date, is to not just show Brockley in a bygone era, but also document the more recent history of the area - those small events that may at the time get our attention but are soon forgotten. The loss of the Elephant House, the old public toilets that once stood where the common is. Okay, there is a certain coincidence that these happen to be the photos we had to hand, but a time will come when they tell their own story.

Someone called Rebekkah has been busy in Ladywell, but Brockley Central currently has a monopoly on the SE4 area. We're hoping you can change that - it's a strangely satisfying experience, documenting the date and exact location. Maybe we'll revisit the topic in a few years time to see what has changed.


The Comerford Road postcard that turned up on eBay, now preserved for ever on Historypin (hope you don't mind, b.)