HISTORIC buildings, structures and monuments across Greater Manchester are among thousands of photos featuring on a new "Digital Domesday" website.

The first online archive of the nation's treasures - called Images of England - has been compiled by English Heritage over the past seven years at a cost of £7.4 million.

A total of 315,000 images feature on the site and, of these, 3,500 are in Greater Manchester.

These include the grade-1 listed Manchester Town Hall; Manchester's grade-II listed Apollo Theatre ; grade-II listed locks along the Ashton Canal; and grade-II* listed Foxdenton Hall, near Oldham.

Other buildings include Pear Mill in West Bredbury; St Mary's Parish Church in Stockport; and the former Natwest Bank, in Manchester's Spring Gardens.

One of the most recently built properties to feature on the archive is the grade-II listed New Century House and Conference Hall, in Corporation Street, which was constructed 1962.

Snapshot

"The intention was to capture for ever a snapshot record of how England looks now," said a spokesman for English Heritage.

"In this respect, it is a kind of contemporary Domesday Book - a digital history of England that captures what our society values in its history and its architecture.

"Future generations will be able to look back and see how England looked."

The website includes images of 420 castles, 7,484 parish churches, 2,146 telephone boxes, 2,700 milestones, eight waterfalls, 1,098 lamp posts, 130 lock gates, 49 village stocks, 73 bandstands, 11 skating rinks, 11 lidos, two penguin pools and one racing pigeon loft.

Tim Belcher, who co-ordinated the survey across the north west for English Heritage said that 36 volunteers had taken part in Greater Manchester.

"I believe that the value of the archive will certainly grow and its relevance will really be appreciated by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren in years to come," said Mr Belcher, who is based at English Heritage's national archives in Swindon.

"We are delighted with how successful the project has been, with more than 3,500 images of Greater Manchester available on-line - which accounts for around 95 per cent of the total listed buildings within the city.

"This project's success was largely thanks to the hard work and time put in by our 36 volunteers all of whom are both passionate photographers and historians."

The website can be accessed at imagesofengland.org.uk .