A massive collection of sound recordings from classic movies and real-life historic events has been retrieved from a storage vault at Elstree Film Studios.

Cinesound Sound Effects, which was based at Imperial Studios in Borehamwood for around 40 years, built up an archive of around 4million recordings.

The collection includes sound effects from all of the James Bond films and recordings of Churchilll's state funeral and the bombing of Portsmouth harbour.

Last week the archive was bought by a London company, Sound Effects Library Ltd, which will make the sound recordings available to internet users.

Managing director Lloyd Billing said: "This collection is truly unique and it has been recorded by the world's great sound recordists.

"It contains sounds like 1,000-plus crowd scenes from the film Cromwell and Spitfires passing dangerously close overhead."

Cinesound Effects Library Ltd was based at Imperial Studios, which stood next to Elstree Film Studios in Maxwell Road, until it closed last year.

Staff there had gathered sound effects from films including Zulu, Platoon, Midnight Express, Lawrence of Arabia and Battle of Britain.

Sound Effects Library Ltd is now busy cataloguing the sounds and transferring them to a digital format to be played on the internet.

Neville Reid, the studio director of Elstree Film and Television Studios, this week said he was delighted that the collection had been bought.

"It is great the library has been saved because it would have deteriorated in storage and become completely useless," he said.

Cinesound Effects Library Ltd was launched when four sound editors decided to pool their individual collections in a Borehamwood garage in 1960.

The directors, who started off with 2,000 sound effects, soon moved to Maxwell Road and began buying up other collections of recordings.