Waterloo Bridge is the only Thames crossing in central London built largely by women.
During the Second World War, with men away fighting, women took over the construction work, pouring concrete and laying the Portland stone cladding that still gleams white against grey London skies. The bridge earned the nickname "the Ladies' Bridge," though official records were slow to acknowledge the workforce that built it.
Opened in 1945, it replaced an earlier bridge that had grown structurally unsound. The view from its centre is considered the finest in London: St Paul's Cathedral to the east, the Houses of Parliament to the west, and the whole sweep of the South Bank below.
VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use Waterloo Bridge to tell the story of London's wartime transformation, revealing how the city's most elegant river crossing became an unlikely monument to the women who built it.