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English Heritage colours the past – before and after

Polish trainee agents tackle assault course at Audley End
  • Polish trainee agents tackle an assault course at Audley End, Essex, known as Station 43 and used as a training base during the second world war by the Polish section of the Special Operations Executive. Audley End was a finishing school where agents were trained in irregular warfare, silent killing and weapons handling.
    Photograph: Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, London

Virginia Courtauld and her dogs outside Eltham Palace
  • Virginia Courtauld and her dogs outside Eltham Palace, south-east London, in 1940. The dogs were named Kaïs (Afghan hound), Solfo (giant poodle) – named after one of her brother-in-law Jack’s racehorses – and Caesar (great dane).
    Photograph: Private collection

Lady Amabel Cowper on the terrace at Wrest Park in c.1865
  • Lady Amabel Cowper on the terrace at Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, c.1865. This photograph was probably taken in the 1860s; a similar picture in her album is dated to 1865 when she would have been 19 years old.
    Photograph: Private collection

Polish trainee agents play football at Audley End
  • Polish trainee agents play football at Audley End. This photograph is believed to show Polish agents and British troops, based at Audley End to guard and support them, playing football on the lawn in front of the house, probably in 1942 or 1943.
    Photograph: Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, London

Entertainment for convalescents organised by Major Wingfield – man riding a camel 1915
  • Entertainment for convalescents organised by Major Wingfield. Two convalescents from Wrest Park auxiliary hospital ride a camel on an outing to the menagerie at Major Wingfield’s estate at nearby Ampthill House in July or August 1915. Major Sir Anthony Wingfield kept a menagerie of animals including ostriches, camels, llamas, zebras, bisons and bulls.
    Photograph: Private collection

Herbert Thellusson sitting on a bench in the Brodsworth Hall garden
  • Herbert Thellusson sitting on a bench in the garden of Brodsworth Hall, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Thellusson was the second son of Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson, the builder of Brodsworth Hall, and his wife Georgiana. Later photographs of Brodsworth show a tennis court marked out on the croquet lawn. Herbert inherited the hall in 1899, moving in with his wife Sarah.
    Photograph: English Heritage

This is not the first time English Heritage has colourised archive photography. In 2018, in a bid to trace the identities of first world war nurses who worked at England’s first wartime country house hospital, Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, the charity transformed original photographs into colour images and called on the public to help spot their ancestors among the nurses photographed.

Group of soldiers and nurses on the terrace at Wrest in the spring of 1915. Sister Ife, who was responsible for A-Ward is the nurse on the far left, Nurse Cook is second from the right.
  • Group of soldiers and nurses on the terrace at Wrest in the spring of 1915. Sister Ife, who was responsible for A-Ward, is the nurse on the far left; Nurse Cook is second from the right.
    Photograph: Private collection

Nurses and convalescents on the terrace steps at Wrest, Christmas 1914.
  • Nurses and convalescents on the terrace steps at Wrest, Christmas 1914.
    Photograph: Private collection