All Over the Map…

An interesting site we developed recently was a Heritage Guide site built for The 8th in the East, a Heritage Lottery funded community project set up to celebrate the history of the US Airforce’s ‘Friendly Invasion’ of the East of England during WW2.

The archaeological impact of the Eighth US Army Air Force can be seen in the landscape throughout our region. Huge areas covering many hectares were used to construct the airfields, hospitals, headquarters and bomb stores where the US personnel were based. At first glance surviving archaeology of these sites often seems to have disappeared without trace. On closer inspection, however, many of the sites and buildings – used as living quarters, cinemas, hangers, electric sub-stations, control towers – still survive, along with the roads and infrastructure that serviced them.

The ‘Heritage Guide’ website was built with the idea of using the Google Maps API so that these airfield sites can be accessed through an interactive full screen map. The website was built on a WordPress platform to enable clients to manage the site themselves, even with the ability to add new locations as easily as publishing a new blog post. The initial view on the home page is of the East of England in a graphic style reminiscent of the era, showing pins numbered for the locations to correspond with the printed version of the guide. When you hover over each pin a small information panel reveals more information about the location. What is a nice touch is that when you click on the pin you switch to a zoomed-in satellite view of the location and you are then presented with a detailed description of the location, including it’s contact details and a gallery of images including some fascinating historical photographs.

It’s always a pleasure to work on such an interesting project with unusual technical requirements. Why not let us put your business on the map?