Waterloo Bridge is called the Ladies Bridge because it was mainly built by women.
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| photo credit Moacir P. de Sá Pereira |
It was a time when London was being pummelled by the Luftwaffe (the official name for the Nazi air force founded in 1935), causing mass destruction to buildings that had stood for centuries.
Undeterred by the nightly raids during the Blitz, however, a group of women who have largely gone ignored until now never lost their resolve to build what is now one of the city's most important bridges.
Their work on Waterloo Bridge left it with the moniker of Ladies Bridge, but this fact has been ignored by all but a few.
There is no remaining photographic or written evidence of the women building the bridge, indeed many people who saw the construction efforts say they cannot recall seeing any women there.
Their work is now being recognised after construction historian Christine Wall worked with filmmaker Karen Livesey, looking into the reason why they have been ignored.
'The Ladies Bridge' reveals that their absence from historic records is put down to the liquidation of Peter Lind, the construction firm behind the bridge.
Peter Mandell, manager of the company, explained: 'The difficulty with the Peter Lind records were that when the company went into liquidation in the late 1980s, a lot of their information was kept or pillaged by people who wanted a keepsake of their time with Peter Lind.
'But it was generally well known that, anecdotally if you like, that there were women working, and in fact names of a particular lady was given to me at the time.'
Because of the lack of pictorial and written evidence, it is not known what work the women carried out on the bridge, but because many men were out fighting in World War Two, their effort is believed to be significant.
Mr Mandell told the Smithsonian: 'There's no hidden agenda behind their unacknowledged achievements - the archive was simply lost when Lind temporarily suspended trading in the 1970s.
'We're very proud of our female workforce. We're rebuilding this archive and want to honour them with a plaque on the bridge.'
In 1944, two years after the bridge was partially opened, 25,000 women were in the construction industry working as brick layers, labourers and joiners.
They worked on the understanding that they would be paid less than their male counterparts and would give up their new jobs when the men returned to war.
The bridge was opened with a proper ceremony in December 1945 once the war was over, but the women were not acknowledged for their work.
Labour politician Herbert Morrisso said:
'The men who built Waterloo Bridge are fortunate men. They know that, although their names may be forgotten, their work will be a pride and use to London for many generations to come.'
Although they were not called upon to go into combat, they could join the Women's royal Naval Service (Wrens), Women's Auxiliary Air Force (Waffs) or the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS).
Elsewhere in the war, women were drafted in to jobs that were previously carried out by men and in the metal and chemical industries they made up one third of the total workforce.
They worked in factories creating weapons that would be used on the battlefield at the same time as running their homes and coping with rationing.
More women were employed in industrial sectors in the early forties as the segregation between men and women diminished.
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