London Sound Survey

Last night at our monthly pub meeting, it was a pleasure to meet Ian Rawes who runs a web site called London Sound Survey. I must thank Matt Brown of Londonist who encouraged Ian to join us.

I have spent some considerable time at the London Sound Survey site this morning. It is a quite astonishing achievement, featuring as it does not only recorded London sounds from the birth of recording up until literally last week, but also cites much historical writing on the topic going back to the Middle Ages. It is very much a crowd sourcing project too, encouraging Londoners to share interesting sound clips from our citiscape, be they in shops, streets, offices or parks. But I can barely adequately describe all the treasure on this site.

In its own words, London Sound Survey describes the project thus:

The London Sound Survey collects the sounds of everyday public life throughout London and compiles past accounts to show how the sound environment has changed.

I’ve added their blog to our roll and a link from London Historians web site. I’d encourage you to bookmark this superb web site. I have.