Pillar drill operator Isobel Ansted at Plessey factory

This photograph of Isobel Anstead at Plessey’s secret Underground factory is one of my favourite objects in the collection as it represents the contribution of women to the war effort back home. The wartime factory had 2,000 staff, mostly women, working in shifts 24 hours a day in the newly constructed tunnels which were later to become the Central Line extension.