Ordnance Survey captures bygone times in Aberdeen

Over the past several months, we have been digitising a set of four and a half thousand photographs taken by the Ordnance Survey in the 1950s whilst they were doing their review of revision points (for controlling the level of details on large scale maps). In every image you’ll see a board with the OS information and usually a man pointing at something very specific, and often quite arbitrary: these are the revision points. These “RPs” were usually objects that were the most likely to stay the same or have a long life, such as the corner of a building or a boundary post nail.

A lot of the pictures taken are of roads or urban sprawl, but some provide are a window into the past of a city rebuilding and expanding after the war, laden with hints at how people used to live. Some things have changed a lot; others are easily recognisable and still around today. Below we’ve selected some of the best and most interesting from the collection.

This first image shows some wonderful period advertising on King Street. We can see some recognisable brands like Cadburys, McEwan’s, Gold Flake and Guiness. These brands are still around but the advertising has changed drastically over the years. “A Guinness a day” was the one that jumped out whilst scanning them.

This image of Crown Street in the snow includes an advertisement for the film 'When the Worlds Collide', released in 1951. The fact it is in colour was a big selling point! At this point in history colour films were becoming more common, but it wasn’t a given like it is today. There is also the lower half of an advert for washing up liquid or cleaner, which at the time was exclusively marketed towards women.

Old Kittybrewster Train Station on Powis Terrace, with an advert for a local newspaper.

Set of vintage cars outside the premises of Charles Taggart Ltd (agricultural machinery merchants) at 32 Ashgrove Road, with new housing developments behind.

Meldrum & Wood's pharmacy on the corner of Mount Street and Rosemount Place with a man in the window at work.

Pedestrians outside the Butcher's Arms pub on George Street with a contemporary set of traffic lights in view.

Close up of a small van out by Regent Bridge at the harbour with cranes working in the background.

Aberdeen has always had a close relationship with the sea. This image on the right is a great picture of the docks at work in 1959, complete with a large ship (likely a container ship of some kind), crate moving cranes and various industrial vehicles ready to move produce to and from the warehouses. Many of these structures are still in use today.

 

This image is something a bit more period centric; a very large fog siren for warning ships of dangers when visibility is low...fog being an ever-present problem in Aberdeen, even more so at the time.

You can see the horn itself and the massive air canisters that power it, all set into a concrete barrier to help protect the ears of the operator or anyone standing closeny. This, alongside its neighbour the Girdleness Lighthouse would have been quite the local talking point!

Some things never change! A wonderful picture of St Machar’s Cathedral from Seaton Park.

So, why go to all this effort? Well, the OS set is very comprehensive, touching every part of the city. With these images digitised we can make a map that would let anyone click an area and see what that place looked like going on 70 years later. We are hoping to add it to the existing Timepix resource in the near future.

It’s always interesting and fascinating to see how things change over time and these images give a fantastic insight into how life was (and clues at how things might change from now). When looking at the past, you are not just looking at the history of a location, but you are getting a glimpse into some of the stories of the people that called that place home.

This work has been carried out by Jonathan Stevenson, who has held a Kickstarter-funded internship at the archives for three months. During his time with us he has digitised 4500 images from the Ordnance Survey albums and created spreadsheets of metadata recording key information about the images which will enable us to add them to Timepix in the future.