My Best Christmas Present

For Christmas, Clare's dad bought us a portfolio of maps showing how the area immediately our house has changed over the past 200 years.

This map from 1949 is especially fascinating. Look hard and you can spot the gaps where houses were blown up by V1 and V2 flying bombs just four or five years earlier.

Today you can walk the streets and spot the infills, usually built in quite a different style to those surrounding them.