As specialists in providing
flood risk data and reports, we often report on the various flooding incidences
that occur across the UK – from fluvial (river), pluvial (surface water),
coastal and groundwater. Our data provides accurate details that can be assessed
to determine the potential risk posed at any given property or location.
Our colleagues at JBA Risk
Management, specialists in hazard mapping and catastrophe modelling, have
provided us with details on a major flooding event with a difference, which
occurred exactly 200 years ago today. We wanted to share the details of
the 1814 London Beer Flood to mark the anniversary and illustrate the impact
that surface water flooding can have on a location, regardless of the source:
“Exactly two hundred years
ago today, over one million pints of beer flooded London’s Tottenham Court Road
when the vats from a local porter brewery gave way.
The vats at The Horse Shoe
Brewery on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, now the site
of the Dominion Theatre, were owned by Meux and Company, (which became Friary
Meux in 1965) a successful supplier of porter style beer. There was a trend for
larger and larger vats at this time and Meux & Co were proud of theirs, one
of which was said in 1785 to be able to hold the equivalent of 4,500 barrels of
beer.
However, on 17 October 1814,
disaster struck: a vat containing 3,550 barrels of fermenting beer exploded. In
so doing, it knocked the cocks out of another huge vat, brought down a wall and
part of the roof which in turn smashed many hogsheads, each containing 420
pints of beer. In total some 1,080,000 pints of porter rushed out into the
street in a wall of beer around 15 feet high, flattening two houses and badly
damaging the nearby Tavistock Arms pub.
The area around St Giles
parish where the accident took place was known as “Rookeries” due to the number
of persons living in each house and their generally low standard of living and
housing. Had the flood occurred in the night time, there would have been many
more fatalities. Fortunately it took place in the daytime while most folk were
at work; even so, some eight unfortunate souls were unable to escape in time
from the rapidly flooding basements and cellars of the Rookeries.
Reports at the time claim that
people in the nearby area were seen scooping up beer from the streets and in
some cases, kneeling down to suck it up straight from the ground. It's hard to
imagine such an extraordinary industrial accident occurring today, but if it
did, would we behave any differently? Whatever the answer to that, this
will probably be the best day for a long time to come to go to your local and
have a pint, remembering the day that London was awash with beer.
Alison Ford, Marketing
---
What really happened in the London Beer Flood 200 years ago?
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/what-really-happened-in-the-london-beer-flood-200-years-ago-9796096.html
No comments:
Post a Comment