Get your beer goggles on

LONDON’S Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road has had its share of disastrous flops, but nothing to match the disaster that occurred on its site in 1814, when a tsunami of beer brought death and damage to an area of slums known as St Giles Rookery.

The eight-acre Rookery—described by a local clergyman as ‘a perpetually decaying slum seemingly always on. On its edge stood the Horse Shoe Brewery of Meux & Co—at 103,000sq ft, one of the capital’s largest—which was renowned for making a popular dark, strong beer called porter. Supposedly given its name because porters liked it so much, the brew matured in 22ft-tall wooden barrels, with staves secured by 81 tons of iron hoops.