The construction of the Metropolitan District Railway

A scene near Sloane Square at the start of excavating the railway cutting. From a series of 64 photographs taken in the late 1860s by Henry Flather to document the construction of the 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.