The United Kingdom is a country steeped in history. It is littered with castles, palaces and monuments that have witnessed some of the most important events in history. Some have crumbled. Some have endured. Others have been regenerated to serve more modern purposes.
Click through the gallery to see fascinating 'then and now' images of famous attractions across the UK to see how much they have – or haven’t – changed...
The Shambles in York is an atmospheric jumble of medieval timber framed buildings, overhanging a narrow cobbled lane. Its history dates back over 900 years, much of which was spent as the city’s meat district. Shambles is a corruption of the Saxon word fleshammels, meaning flesh shelves. Most of the buildings had slaughterhouses out back and the freshly butchered meat was hung up outside the shops and laid out for sale on what are now the shop window-bottoms. When this photo was taken in 1890, there were still 31 butcher shops dotted along the street.
Today the Shambles is one of the most photographed streets in York, its beautifully restored medieval buildings home to cafes and fudge shops and the inspiration behind Diagon Alley, the magical wizarding shopping street in the Harry Potter movies. But look closely and there are still signs of its less savoury past. You can still see meat hooks on the walls. And that gutter that runs down the middle of the cobbled lane? That dates from when butchers would wash the blood and swill out of their shops, straight onto the laneway.
The Eden Project is arguably the West Country’s most recognisable and popular attraction. But when its founder Tim Smit first came up with the idea of creating a ‘cathedral to economic botany’ he only had £3,000 ($3,700) for the project in his bank account. Convincing architects, construction companies, government funding bodies and even the local council to get on board was an achievement in itself. But by the time construction began, everyone wanted to be associated with Smit’s visionary project, including then prime minister Tony Blair, seen here on the site in February 2000.
Smit had wanted to build a huge horticultural expo that looked like a lost civilisation in a volcanic crater and to show what we can do as a species when we work with nature. An old Cornish clay pit just three miles (5km) from St Austell provided the perfect setting. And the hexagonal biomes, inspired by a sink full of washing up bubbles, looked suitably futuristic. Today, an estimated 750,000 visitors a year wander through the diaphanous biomes experiencing a dazzling variety of botanical environs, including what is claimed to be the world's largest indoor rainforest.
Known as ‘The Queen of Welsh Resorts’, the elegant seaside town of Llandudno has been popular with visitors since Victorian times. It straddles a peninsula with long sandy beaches on either side and is bookended by the Great Orme, a craggy bluff towering 679 feet (207m) above the town. In its heyday, Llandudno was the epitome of 19th-century grandeur, with graceful wedding-cake architecture lining its sweeping waterfront promenade. Here we see fully-clothed Victorian visitors paddling on the beach just east of the pier in 1895.
Apart from the fashions, Llandudno hasn’t changed that much. You won’t see anyone carrying frilly umbrellas, but you can still stroll along the elegant promenade and onto Wales’s longest pier, just like the Victorians did. You can even catch a Punch and Judy show and ride a donkey on the beach. Getting to the top of Great Orme is considerably easier, however. The cable car, opened in 1969, whisks visitors to the summit in no time at all. The Victorians had to put on their heavy leather hiking boots and climb.
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The Tower of London has been a fixture on the Thames in London since William the Conqueror built it in the 1070s. For the first 500 years it was a surprisingly luxurious palace for royalty. But over the corresponding centuries it has been a prison, armoury, military store and even a zoo and witnessed some of the most gruesome episodes of English history. This postcard from the late 19th century dates from when the Tower was already a popular tourist attraction.
Today the Tower of London is one of the most famous tourist attractions in the world, with over two million visitors each year. A highlight of any visit is gazing upon the Crown Jewels, a dazzling collection still used in coronations, and protected in the Tower since the 1660s. This photo was taken in 2014 when an art installation entitled Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red was created to commemorate the centenary of the start of the First World War. Each of the ceramic poppies seen here represents a British soldier who lost his life in that terrible conflict.
Legend has it that it was King Lear’s father, Bladud, who discovered the healing properties of the geothermal springs that became the city of Bath’s famous Roman Baths. The waters cured his leprosy, apparently. And the waters were known to pre-Roman Celtic people of Britain; it was the Romans who built the imposing sandstone public baths here in AD 70. When the Romans left Britain, the baths were abandoned. And by the 19th century, when this photo was taken, the great baths had fallen into disrepair.
Today much of this extraordinary Roman bathing complex has been restored and steaming spring water, reaching 46°C (115°F), still fills the bathing site every single day. While it is no longer permitted to bathe in the waters after a bather died from an amoeba-borne illness she contracted from the water in 1978, visitors are free to walk on ancient pavements and explore the historic changing rooms and plunge pools just as the Romans did 2,000 years ago. The complex also houses an interactive museum filled with treasures dating from the time Bath was known as Aquae Sulis.
Peak Cavern near Castleton in Derbyshire boasts the largest cave entrance in the British Isles, measuring 328 feet (100m) long, 66 feet (20m) high and 115 feet (35m) wide. It is also home to an impressive array of large flow stone stalactite formations. Today, the cavern is a popular tourist attraction. But between 1642 to 1880 it was used exclusively by rope makers who used its length to make ropes for the surrounding lead mining industry. You can see rudimentary machines they used in this photo from the late 1800s.
That’s not to say the caves weren’t visited by tourists in the early days. Wealthy locals paid the rope makers to take them into the cave using only candles for light. And in 1842 a small passageway was blasted for a visit by Queen Victoria. The passage led to the Orchestra Gallery where the ropemakers’ children would sing for visitors. Today, modern lighting and purpose-built gangways make visiting the cavern easier and in the summer months concerts are held in the main cave. The Vaccines, Kim Wilde and Jarvis Cocker have all performed here.
The Harland & Wolff dockyards in Belfast was founded in 1861 by Yorkshireman Edward Harland and his German business partner Gustave Wolff. By the beginning of the 20th century the dock was the most prolific builder of ocean liners in the world, most famously, the RMS Titanic. Declared by some as ‘unsinkable’ at the time it was built, it tragically sank on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. Here we see workers at the shipyard knocking off for the day in 1910, the Titanic just visible in the background.
The striking Titanic Belfast Museum sits right beside the Titanic Slipways, the Harland & Wolff Drawing Offices and Hamilton Graving Dock – the very places where Titanic was designed, built and launched. The museum was opened in 2012 to mark the centenary of the Titanic’s tragic sinking with its angled steel segments reminiscent of the bows of that mighty ship. Set over six floors, the fascinating interactive museum tells the story of Titanic from conception, construction and launch through to her maiden voyage and the disaster that sealed her place in history.
The local council in Gateshead, in the northeast of England, claims that the huge Angel of the North statue that sits in its constituency is “as much a part of Gateshead's identity as the Statue of Liberty is to New York”. It also says that Antony Gormley’s 66 foot (20m) tall steel statue was a catalyst for change and cultural regeneration – quite the achievement considering its unremarkable location, a former colliery pithead overlooking the A1 motorway and the East Coast Main Line rail tracks. Here we see it being manoeuvred into place in February 1998.
Close to 20 years later, Gormley’s remarkable statue is regarded as one of the most talked about and recognisable pieces of public art ever produced. Almost two thirds of people in the northeast of England had already heard of the Angel of the North before it was built and on completion, its fame grew exponentially across the country. Its massive 175 foot (54m) wingspan is bigger than a Boeing 757 jet and at one time concerned locals that it might uproot and fly away. It didn’t, of course, instead becoming firmly entrenched as a must-see stop on any visit to the region.
Despite its utilitarian purpose and huge chimney stack pouring out toxic pollution, the Bankside Power Station, on the banks of the Thames in London, was very much a cathedral of industry. The oil-fired power station was designed by the eminent church architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and built in two phases between 1947 and 1963. Encased in brick, it replaced an earlier installation, and helped to alleviate a critical shortage of electricity in London until 1981. This photo was taken from the north bank of the Thames in 1954.
Today the building is a cathedral to art after the Tate took over the site in 1995 and transformed it into a breathtaking gallery for its collection of modern art. The huge turbine hall provides an unfettered space for international artists to indulge their wildest ideas, including Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who filled the space with 100 million individually crafted porcelain sunflower seeds. This photo shows the former power station as it is today, alongside the Millennium Walkway Bridge which was built in 2000 and is famous for wobbling when it first opened, and appearing in Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince.
When this photo was taken at the turn of the 20th century, these exhausted miners in the bowels of the Blaenavon coal mine could not possibly have imagined that their workplace would achieve UNESCO World Heritage Site status in the year 2000 and become a tourist attraction barely three years later. They were simply just another generation of miners who had been digging out coal in the area since the early 1800s, sitting in a dugout to the side of the pit shaft to avoid being run over by trams transporting coal out of the mine.
Today the mine is home to the Big Pit National Coal Museum, where visitors get to experience the conditions miners worked in, albeit in a more comfortable and safer manner. Former miners lead tours that see visitors descend 300 feet (90m) underground to see a section of original underground workings, kitted up with the same equipment that the miners wore including helmets, helmet lamps and belts. Above ground, an award-winning museum takes visitors through the history of coal mining in the region.
Blackpool began life as a seaside resort in the late 1780s by catering for wealthy visitors looking for fresh sea air. Then in 1846 the railways came and the demographic changed. Thousands of workers from the mills and factories of the northwest brought their families to Blackpool for their annual holidays. When this photo was taken in 1894 the town boasted three piers, a pleasure beach, a Winter Garden, trams and, of course, the iconic Blackpool Tower, completed that year and famously inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
While Blackpool’s allure dipped in the face of competition from low-cost package tours to the (considerably) sunnier parts of Europe, the seaside resort has continued to hold a special place in the country’s heart. New rides and attractions in the amusement parks along the front have drawn in younger crowds. The winter illuminations continue to thrill and delight. And the annual visit to Blackpool Tower by the stars of BBC1 TV show Strictly Come Dancing reminds people that Blackpool is still the place to come for a little bit of old school glitz and glamour.
Clifton Suspension Bridge, which spans the Avon Gorge in Bristol, southwest England, was designed by the famous Industrial Age engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He referred to the bridge as “My first child, my darling” but sadly died before his masterpiece was completed. Here we see the partially built bridge in 1863, four years after he died and just one year before it was officially opened in 1864.
Today the bridge is a Grade I-listed structure and one of the oldest surviving iron suspension bridges in the world. For the people of Bristol it is more than that. It is a symbol of their city and a testament to Bristol's original thinkers and independent spirit. It also makes a fetching foreground for the annual Bristol Balloon Fiesta, held every August. Head to the visitor centre on the Leigh Woods side of the bridge for a display about its construction and history right up to the modern day.
In the 19th century, global trade revolved around Liverpool. Its position on England’s northwest coast meant that it was perfectly placed to facilitate trade between the Americas and the rest of Europe. And when Albert Dock opened in 1846 it changed the way docks worked forever too. Its warehouses were fireproof and secure, traders did deals before import taxes were due and hydraulic cranes meant that ships were unloaded and turned around in half the time. Here we see merchant ships being unloaded at the dock in 1926.
After the Second World War, and as focus shifted to burgeoning economies in the east, Royal Albert Dock became less important, and despite being awarded Grade I-listed status in 1952, began falling into disrepair. By 1981 it had been completely abandoned. Thankfully, major investment over the corresponding decades saw Royal Albert Dock’s crumbling brick warehouses and silted-up harbour transformed. Today it is the cultural heart of modern Liverpool, home to the Tate Liverpool, The Beatles Story, Merseyside Maritime Museum and International Slavery Museum, alongside a plethora of shops, bars and restaurants.
Mighty Edinburgh Castle sits on a rocky outcrop overlooking the city on a site that has served as a fortress since the Iron Age. Over the centuries it has been a military fortress, royal residence and a prison of war. A future king of England, James I, was born here in 1566. It was besieged repeatedly during the 17th and early 18th centuries. And in 1757 and 1814 the castle housed prisoners from the Seven Years’ War, the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. When this photo was taken in 1885 it was a military barracks.
Today Edinburgh Castle is one of Scotland’s top tourist sites, attracting more than one million visitors each year. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995. The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, a highly choreographed performance by military bands held on a sloping square within the castle walls is telecast around the world. Since 1996, the castle has also been home to Scotland’s most ancient and precious relic, the Stone of Destiny, used in every coronation since it was stolen in 1296 and returned after spending 700 years in England.
The bucolic riverside town of Stratford-upon-Avon is famous around the world as the birthplace of William Shakespeare, a playwright, poet and actor who many regard as the greatest writer in the English language. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 in a half-timbered Tudor family home in Henley Street that still stands today. It was purchased by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in 1847 for £3,000 after a public campaign led by Charles Dickens. Here, we see tourists posing for a photo outside the building in 1896.
After the home was acquired by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, they set about restoring it. A brick facade built in the 18th century was removed and the buildings on either side of it were demolished to avoid the risk of fire destroying the home. The interior was decorated with furniture and everyday items that would have been used when Shakespeare was a child and in the early 1960s, the distinctly more modern Shakespeare Centre was built. One of the highlights of any visit is a performance of scenes from Shakespeare’s plays by actors in Elizabethan costumes (pictured) in the cottage’s beautiful garden.
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