We’re all used to seeing pictures of the past in stark black and white but now for the first time there’s a chance to see how the past really looked. Our new series takes applies a colourisation process to some familiar scenes in towns in Wales and the borders and transforms them in to glorious colour.

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Pigs might not fly, but from time to time you might just find a farmer soaring high in the friendly skies, particularly if you lived in the Forest of Dean in the 1950s. Pictured next to his magnificent flying machine is Hubert Knight. Also known as the ‘knight of the skies’ or the ‘flying farmer!’, the agricultural aviator was from Eastbach Court in the Bicknor area of the Forest of Dean. As well as flying around the countryside, Knight would often jump in his big bird and travel to Ostend and Paris when the mooooooooooood took him. (Pic supplied )
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Who amongst us can pass a rope without savagely yanking on it to see what’s on the other end? If you were partying hard at Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation in Abergavenny during June 1953, there was no shortage of street parties or ropes to pull on. Just check out this game bunch having larks on the town’s Blorenge Road! There’s not a tracksuit or pair of jeans in sight. Just some fellas suited and booted, pulling one another up and down the street on a rope as some guy in a hat does a weird dance. (Pic supplied )
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Despite a fierce and prolonged campaign to build the town’s very own holiday camp in the 1970s, Monmouth has sadly never had a Butlin’s or Pontins to call its home, which is a crying shame! Nevertheless, before Usk adopted the hat of Monmouthshire’s premium prison town, Monmouth did once have a County Gaol! The institution opened in 1790 based on the designs of prison reformer John Howard. Executions used to be carried out on the flat roof of the Gatehouse which has since been converted into residential dwellings. (Pic supplied )