The Work of Harold Wingham, Pioneer Air Photographer, Part II: Buildings

Harold Wingham took up aerial photography after he left the Royal Air Force in 1947. Much of his work was self-funded. The quality of his results attracted the attention of the Paul Popper Ltd Photographic Agency and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.

As well as photographing archaeological features in the landscape, Harold Wingham recorded historic, and sometimes more recent, buildings.

Favourite subjects included well-known abbeys and cathedrals, parish churches, castles and country houses.

This selection of images from the Historic England Archive's  Harold Wingham Collection  illustrate Harold's exceptional skill at taking photographs of buildings, using a hand-held camera from a fixed-wing light aircraft, often flying at low altitude.

The abbey stood at the north end of a hill-town, with a sharp drop beyond to the valley below. Only the 12th-century nave of the abbey church survived the Dissolution. The tower of the otherwise lost parish church of St Paul is to be seen in the foreground.

23 May 1952

The view shows the cathedral before the creation of the 1960s Lychgate Centre, which remodelled the area immediately to the east and north-east. In one writer’s words ‘it remains incomprehensible that this act of self-mutilation should have been permitted’. 

11 September 1951

Numerous aerial photographs of the abbey church appeared after the devastating floods of 2007. Here we see it in more normal times. After the dissolution of the abbey in 1540, the parishioners bought the church so that it could continue as their parish church.  

3 May 1951

This view shows the cathedral with St Mary Major, a Victorian church demolished in 1971. It stood on the site of the Anglo-Saxon minster church. The cathedral was built mainly in the 13th and 14th centuries, but the two towers date from the 12th century. 

22 July 1959

This is a characteristic example of a rural church immediately adjacent to the manor. Down Ampney House is a late 15th structure, and was approached by a gatehouse of 1537, destroyed by fire in 1963. The oldest parts of the church date to the 13th century.        

19 April 1952

Christ Church , built in 1837–9, was one of many Victorian churches catering for Cheltenham’s growing suburbs. The open space (top left) shows the playing fields of the Ladies' College, with (beyond) the railway line to Honeybourne, which closed in the 1960s.  

19 April 1952

Evesham grew up outside the great abbey church, of which little survives beyond the dominant Bell Tower of circa 1530. The town was served by two parish churches. The lower part of the High Street preserves the triangular medieval market-place, now partly infilled.

21 May 1951

A minster church was founded at Fladbury in the late 7th century. Like many early minster churches, Fladbury was established on a terrace above a major river. The present church is of Norman and later date. The rectory to the south was destroyed by fire in 1968.

15 June 1958

The church ‘the best classical church of the county’ was built in 1779 to accompany Hardenhuish House . Following modern development, it now lies within the built-up area of Chippenham, but the photograph captures the parkland character of its original setting. 

23 May 1952

A Benedictine monastery was established here by French monks in 1882 on the site of a former Cistercian monastery . The buildings, including the Church of St Mary , are mainly of 19th- and 20th-century date with some medieval remains. 

 22 July 1959

The castle , described as ‘the most perfect example of military architecture in Cornwall’, was founded circa 1100. The natural hilltop has been scarped and a moat dug. Dating from the late 13th century, it provided a luxurious retreat with a large hunting park.

24 July 1959 

St Briavel’s Castle was the administrative centre of the Forest of Dean and a significant royal hunting centre. The gatehouse was built by Edward I to protect the large arsenal of crossbow-bolts made there before his Welsh and Scottish campaigns. 

4 May 1958

The castle is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Richard II , ‘There stands the castle, by yon tuft of trees … And in it are the Lords of York, Berkeley, and Seymour’. The Berkeley family are still resident in the mainly 14th-century castle today.

14 August 1952

Sudeley Castle was built as a palatial residence. The outer court (left) belongs mainly to the 16th century. The inner court (right) was built in the 15th century. The south and part of the east wings are lost. Just beyond the outer court is the 15th-century church.

1 June 1951

The abbey began life as a nunnery, large parts of which survive around the 15th-century cloister. It was acquired in 1539 by Sir William Sharington and turned into his country house, with Italian-inspired Renaissance architecture, including the octagonal tower. 

23 May 1952

Ragley Hall was built for Edward Conway, 1st Earl of Conway, to replace a fortified manor house. The designer is disputed. The garden façade stands largely as first erected apart from the basement windows and central attic. The gardens were laid out in 1871–2.

11 September 1951

When this photograph was taken, the prison served to house the most violent and hardened criminals in the country. The bleak moorland surroundings made escape difficult. Construction on a radial design began in 1806, initially to house French prisoners of war.

23 July 1959