London Then And Now: Composite Photos

~ beetleypete

Some images from an exhibition held at The Museum of London eight years ago. They took photos of certain areas in 2014, then ‘merged’ them with photos of the exact same spot taken throughout history.

(All the photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.)

Gloucester Road Underground Station. The original dates from 1868.

Duncannon Street, WC2. The original image is from before WW1.

The view from Tower Bridge. The original photo was taken in 1920.

Covent Garden Station, WC2. The original photo was taken in 1930.

London Bridge Station. The original photo dates from around 1930.

Bow Lane. 1930 and 2014.

Brick Lane, East London. 1950s and 2014.

Soho, 1950 and 2014.

Victoria Station, 1950 and 2014.

Piccadilly Circus. 1953 and 2014.

49 thoughts on “London Then And Now: Composite Photos”

  13. Pingback: London Then And Now: Composite Photos — beetleypete | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  15. It’s nice that not everything has changed. I am not a fan of modern architecture. Obviously horse drawn carts wouldn’t work well in this world and I imagine many of them did not have great lives. Of course I loved seeing them when I was a kid. In Devizes we used to see the Carrington Ales shire horses. Magnificent. Foyles…turned into a sex shop! I haven’t looked them up. Surely they still exist. Maybe elsewhere. It was also magnificent.

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  17. I get some strange ideas sometimes. While enjoying these composite photographs the thought occured to me, “What if the people in the older photos are still right there where they have always been, doing what they have always done, perhaps sometimes imagining the people in the up to date photos …though the people in the up to date photos are probably unaware of all those “Ghosts” in their midst …I was particularly stricken with the picture showing the big horse in the street almost touching a person looking into the window of a building. I wondered what the man who is looking into the window of the building might think if he suddenly turned around and got a short glimpse of that horse standing there. Maybe dying is no more than transferring one’s self to another universe that exists within our own but which is invisible to the naked eye. If that would be the case, then those who appear to die would just wake up and go about their normal routines the way they always had.

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    1. That’s a nice thought, John. There are parts of London that are completely unchanged, where you can definitely feel what it would have been like to walk the same streets 100 years or more earlier.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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