I have been building LiDAR Lens for a while now, starting with Wiltshire. It now covers the whole of England and Wales, and it is live at lidarlens.sarsen.org. It is free, there is no login, and it works on a phone. The code is open source on GitHub, so you check it and build your own.
What it does
A circular lens slides over ordinary aerial imagery. Inside the lens you see the bare ground from LiDAR, with the trees and buildings taken away, so banks, ditches, barrows and old field systems stand out. You can switch between relief views such as hillshade and sky-view (on a phone these are the mode buttons 1 to 8), turn the sun round and change its height, add vertical exaggeration, pick a colour ramp, or let auto-contrast do the work.
You can search by place name, postcode or grid reference, or start typing the name of one of about 24,000 scheduled monuments from Historic England and Cadw and pick it from the list.
What's here?
Click anywhere and the What's here? card shows:
- nearby Historic England or Cadw records;
- a measurement of the shape from the LiDAR: its size, height, profile and slope;
- nearby Geograph photos, with their photographers credited;
- a Look here up button, which opens Google AI Mode to ask about the archaeology and history of the spot.
There is also an elevation profile tool, and every view has a link you can share, so someone else sees exactly what you are looking at.
One caution: the measurements come from the terrain model, not from anyone standing in the field. They tell you the shape of the ground, not what it is.
The data
England uses the Environment Agency LiDAR Composite DTM at 1 m, and Wales uses Welsh Government LiDAR, both under the Open Government Licence. My thanks to both for making it open.
County lenses
The county versions are still there too, including the Wiltshire LiDAR Lens, along with others.
The code is open source on GitHub. If you find something interesting, or something that does not work, do let me know in the comments.
