The construction of the Metropolitan District Railway

The Metropolitan District Railway and Victoria Embankment were constructed simultaneously in 1868. Here a group of railway construction workers, or 'navvies', pose for the camera on a site adjacent to Somerset House. The Embankment was opened on 13 July 1870 and the railway to Blackfriars was completed on 30 May 1870. From a series of 64 photographs taken in the late 1860s by Henry Flather to document the construction of the underground railway from Paddington to Blackfriars via Kensington, Westminster and the new Victoria Embankment. Construction was by the 'cut-and-cover' method used to build the first underground railways before the development of the tunnelling shield by James Henry Greathead. The first tunnelled, or 'tube', railway in London was the City & South London Line, which opened in 1890.