I bought some old engravings at auction, a large lot of London around 1828, and also historic buildings ( old castles and the like) of Scotland from the 1790s. There a small number of other UK locations. Before photography this was how places were illustrated, how people learnt about geography, or at least those who had access to books. Speaking of books. A particularly interesting building with a wonderful name that I knew nothing about previously was the ‘Temple of the Muses’, once on Finsbury Square, London.
It was the largest and cheapest bookshop in London (and presumably the country) selling around 1 million books a year. Unfortunately the building burnt down in 1841.
I’ve added a gallery of these old images on the homepage of Geography Photos – see what you can find, and what you can learn about life in the past, how accurate do you think the portrayals are?