The destination for history
Tube Life: Archival images from London's Underground
The London Underground has always been key to the lives of Londoners; from when its stations and stairwells offered refuge from the barrage of the Blitz to its ability to transport 4.8 million people every day.
It was the world’s first underground railway, opening in 1863 as the Metropolitan Railway, and is now the eleventh busiest metro/subway in the world. Tube Life is a visual celebration of this feat of engineering and design through the years, but also a celebration of the people that keep the Underground alive – through shelters and bombings, derailments and disasters, to escapades and adventures.
July 1953. Mrs June Clark of Avenscroft Road, Chiswich, takes a stool with her when she travels to and from work. She says, ‘Men just won’t give up their seats to women nowadays, so I decided a few weeks ago to carry my own.’
13 October 1940. The Women’s Voluntary Service serve tea and sandwiches to people in the Liverpool Street Underground air raid shelter
29 August 2013. Workers inside one of the completed sections of the Crossrail tunnels at Woolwich
20 December 1984. Father Christmas, of Bentall’s Store, Ealing, takes the Tube to pick up his sleigh
The 1936 excavations in Uxbridge
July 1953. Overcrowding on the Central Line platform during rush hour at Liverpool Street Station
