From chimneys pumping out plumes of smoke to City Hall hemmed in by slightly different surroundings to today, a collection of aerial pictures of Bradford from the first half of the 20th century has been made public for the first time this week.

The pictures show the city and its surrounding area from a bygone era – when the chimneys which dominated the landscape were all working and housing estates on the outskirts looked a little more sparse than today.

The images come from a set of more than 15,000 from one of the earliest and most significant collections of aerial photography of the UK and have now been made freely accessible online by English Heritage.

The photographs featuring on the website date from 1919 to 1953, and have gone through a painstaking process of conservation and cataloguing. Due to their age and fragility, many of the earliest plate glass negatives were close to being lost forever.

Pictures from the Bradford district include City Hall in 1928 surrounded by buildings and no sign of what would become Centenary Square, the Bowling Iron Works, Bradford, in 1926, and the Lower Grange housing estate under construction in 1928.

Katy Whitaker, cataloguing expert at English Heritage, said the website currently featured about 120 images of Bradford in the 1920s and 1930s – although plans were in place to continue to progress through pictures from the 1930s and 1940s right up to 1953.

She said: “These show the city and its surroundings at a time when industry was still really important to the local economy, and when people lived close to their place of work. It's before the Clean Air Act so there is often smoke and smog in the atmosphere.

“The shops have awnings over their fronts, there are horses, carts and trams in the streets - and, as a good flying day is a good drying day, you can often see lines of laundry hanging out in back yards, alleys and gardens.”

Many of the pictures focus on the mills, companies, works and quarries which powered the region’s economy including Waterhouse, Denbigh and Company quarries, from 1933, the Bowling Dye Works, in 1928, and Jowett Motor Works, in Idle, in 1928.

Miss Whitaker said: “Aerofilms Ltd took these photos because factory owners, developers, industrialists, municipal authorities and so on commissioned them - aerial photographs were novel at the time, a new way of looking at things, so this type of photo was becoming fashionable as well as having practical applications.

“These images are the first to be released by the HLF-funded Britain from Above project.

“English Heritage and its Scottish and Welsh partners are part-way through conserving, digitising and cataloguing the amazing Aerofilms Collection of early aerial photographs.

“More images of Bradford and surroundings will go online as we progress through the 1930s and 1940s, right up to 1953 when the project comes to an end.

“By the end of the project in 2014, 95,000 images taken between 1919 and 1953 will be available online, showing the changing face of modern Britain.”

The Aerofilms Collection was acquired for the nation in 2007. With the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Foyle Foundation, English Heritage and the Royal Commissions embarked on a programme to conserve, catalogue and digitise the collection and make it freely available online.

Anna Eavis, head of archive at English Heritage, said: “The Aerofilms Collection embodies all that is exciting about aerial photography.

“What is equally remarkable is the skill of the expert staff in England, Scotland and Wales who have saved and conserved these vulnerable negatives and prints and converted them into the high-resolution images you see on screen today.

“We are pleased that the items have been given safe, long term homes, and that each of the organisations involved has been enriched immensely by their addition.”

By the end of the project in 2014, 95,000 images taken between 1919 and 1953 will be available online.

To view the collection in its entirety visit britainfromabove.org.uk.