Building a Victorian underground railway

By the 1830s, the railways had reached London, although there were no connections between the main stations. London’s first underground line, the Metropolitan Railway, opened in 1863, connecting Farringdon, King’s Cross, Euston and Paddington. While that line was being extended, another company began the Metropolitan District Railway – the District, for short.

The first section opened in 1868, connecting South Kensington and Westminster. In the three years afterwards, its tracks unfurled east along the Thames to Blackfriars and Mansion House. The aim was to reach London’s business district in the City, meeting the Metropolitan there to form a circular route. But it took until 1884 to complete this ‘inner circle’.

Flather’s photos show many of the new stations built for the District line, including Notting Hill Gate, Gloucester Road and Bayswater, plus the Praed Street terminal which opened at Paddington in 1868.

This grand roof is being constructed for Kensington Station, now known as High Street Kensington.

The new stations were impressive buildings, acting as street-level symbols of the transport revolution going on underground.

In the 1860s, London was heaving from rapid population growth. The underground lines linked suburbs to the centre and gave Londoners a way to dodge the chronic road traffic above ground. Londoners quickly adopted the new trains, despite concerns about air quality in the tunnels. Cheap services were provided for working class Londoners too. In the mid-1870s, the underground lines were taking 60 million passengers a year.

The construction turned streets into building sites for years. Although they eventually reopened, many houses belonging to working class people were demolished. London’s landscape was permanently changed. This photo shows the area where two lines met near Earl's Court.

The people doing the work in the pictures are navvies, a name for construction workers who built canals and railway lines. By 1866, the District railway employed 2,000 of them. Many came from Ireland and Scotland. They had a reputation for strength and hard work and were seen as better workers than Londoners, who were often smaller and less healthy. Navvies’ living conditions were tough and their work was extremely dangerous.

Rather than tunnelling underground, a ditch was dug from the surface. The tracks were laid, then covered with a brick roof. This method was known as “cut and cover”. Temporary kilns at Earl’s Court baked 140 million bricks for the job. Steam-powered cranes did the heavy lifting. The first Tube tunnels, made by tunnelling at a much deeper level, didn’t open until 1890.

At Leinster Gardens in Bayswater, the District ran beneath two terraced houses. The houses were knocked down, but a facade was built to fill the gap and keep the terraced street looking as though nothing had changed.

East of Westminster, the District line ran towards the north bank of the Thames. It hugged the river as it headed on to Temple and Blackfriars. The riverside section ran through a tunnel cut into the Victoria Embankment, a major project completed at almost the same time. By 1871, trains could run west from Mansion House to Kensington, then continue to Moorgate on the Metropolitan.