In pictures: Thousands of aerial images of England online for first time

Norwich Bus Station, known for its distinctive steel roof, won the 2006 SCALA Civic Building of the Year Award

Historic England has published more than 400,000 aerial photographs online for the first time, including hundreds of locations in the East.

The pictures include historic landmarks and cropmarks showing hidden archaeology beneath the surface.

Historic England hopes to add more than six million aerial images to its explorer tool in the coming years.

Tony Calladine, from Historic England, said the pictures, dating back to 1919, would help "unlock the mysteries of England's past".

Norwich Cathedral, pictured in 1946, survived bombing raids during June 1942

Norwich's castle has been a landmark in the city since Norman times

About 300,000 of the photos are the work of Historic England's Aerial Investigation and Mapping team, which was established in 1967.

The team takes photographs of England from the air to discover new archaeological sites, create archaeological maps and monitor the condition of historic sites across the country.

The British airship R101 during its maiden flight on 14 October 1929 over Bedford. A year later it crash-landed in France on its first overseas flight, killing 48 of the 54 passengers on board

Buried Iron Age or Roman settlements were revealed by cropmarks during summer 2011 near Keysoe, Bedfordshire

A 1948 photograph of the Roman town of Verulamium on the western side of St Albans, with the Roman theatre in the foreground

The remaining 100,000 images come from the Historic England Archive aerial photography collection, which includes interwar and post-war images from Aerofilms Ltd and the Royal Air Force.

Mr Calladine said: "The remarkable pictures of the East of England give a fascinating insight into our local areas, allowing people to see how their street and their town centre looked when their great-grandparents lived there."

One of the oldest photos in the archive is of Ipswich Town Hall and Corn Exchange, taken in 1921

The photograph of the Stoke Bridge Wharf, Ipswich, was taken in May 1933

The cropmarks in Bassingbourn mark the site of an important medieval centre, originally belonging to the de Bassingbourn family from the 12th Century

An old view of Cambridge University Library, constructed between 1931-1934

A newer picture of Cambridge University Library, which has been extended over the years

Aerial photographs captured the 2014 flooding of the River Great Ouse at Fen Drayton in Cambridgeshire

Images from 1919 to the present day have been added to the tool, covering nearly 30% of England.

Historic England said it hoped people would use it to research their local areas and that local authorities could use the tool for archaeology and planning.

A photograph shows the distinctive star-shaped 17th Century Tilbury Fort guarding the River Thames

During World War Two, coastal ports such as Harwich (top left) and Felixstowe (foreground) were protected with layers of defences to protect them from air raids and invasion

Formal terraces and ponds of a later 17th Century garden called The Falls in Harrington, Northamptonshire

A photo captures the earthworks of Old Sulby medieval settlement in Northamptonshire