Repost: The forgotten heroines of London's 'Ladies Bridge'

Historian reveals how women were drafted to construct Waterloo Bridge during WWII but never got the credit they deserved

• Records of women who helped build the bridge have never been found
• Could have been thrown out when construction company folded
• Female workforce ignored when the bridge was opened in 1945 but male workers were thanked
• By 1944, 25,000 women were working in the construction industry

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 17:26 EST, 15 July 2013 | UPDATED: 08:34 EST, 16 July 2013

It was a time when London was being pummelled by the Luftwaffe, 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.

Wartime effort: It is well known that women worked on farms when the nation's men were sent to war, but the accounts of women building bridges are largely untold

Undervalued: Women were put to work on the understanding that they would give up their temporary job when the male workforce returned from the war

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.

To read more or watch a clip from the documentary, visit http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news.