The Arch Was Always Meant for This: Hiver Taproom's 1836 Address on the Bermondsey Beer Mile

Hiver Taproom and Events Space sits inside one of the brick arches on Stanworth Street, in the heart of the Bermondsey Beer Mile in South London. Long before the smell of hops and honey filled this stretch, the arch itself was already making history. It's part of the London & Greenwich Railway viaduct of 1836 — the world's first railway built specifically to carry passengers, and the first entirely elevated railway line ever constructed. Nearly two hundred years on, Hiver now pours honey beer in the same brick vault, and the history is as much a reason to visit as the beer.

The world's first railway built for passengers

Most early railways existed to move coal and freight. The London & Greenwich Railway was different: it was designed from the outset to carry people, which made it the first passenger railway in the world. It was also the first railway line built entirely on an elevated viaduct, rather than running at street level.

The idea came from Colonel George Thomas Landmann, a former Royal Engineer, who faced a problem unique to a city already dense with streets: how do you run a railway through London without a level crossing bringing every cart and carriage to a halt at every junction? Landmann's answer was to put the whole line in the air. Nearly four miles of brick viaduct now carry the railway from London Bridge to Greenwich, supported by almost nine hundred arches — some built at an angle, known as "skew arches," so they could line up with streets that didn't meet the railway at neat right angles. It remains the longest continuous run of arches in Britain, and Stanworth Street's arches, including the two Hiver now occupies, are part of that same run.

Sixty million bricks and a collapse along the way

Building it was no small feat of engineering. The contractor, Hugh McIntosh, employed around 400 navvies, and by the height of construction an estimated sixty million bricks had gone into the viaduct, shipped up the Thames by barge from Sittingbourne in Kent.

The ground didn't cooperate. Soft, peaty subsoil beneath Bermondsey caused several piers to shift, and in January 1836 two arches near Tooley Street collapsed outright during construction. Landmann's response was to pioneer the use of concrete to reinforce the foundations — a genuinely innovative technique for its time, and one of the reasons the viaduct, and the arch Hiver Taproom now calls home, is still standing and doing useful work nearly two centuries later.

When the line opened, Bermondsey changed overnight

The railway reached Bermondsey Street in October 1836 and pushed through to London Bridge that December. Londoners turned out in numbers nobody had predicted: around 13,000 people rode the line on the first Whit Monday holiday alone, and annual passenger numbers topped a million and a quarter within its first few years.

The railway company itself never made much money — it was absorbed by the South Eastern Railway in 1845 — but the viaduct it left behind has long outlasted the business that built it.

From workshops to taprooms: the arch's second act

Here's the detail that makes Hiver's presence on Stanworth Street feel less like coincidence and more like continuity. From the very beginning, Landmann's plans intended the arches themselves to earn their keep as workshops, rented out beneath the tracks. Nearly two hundred years later, that's exactly what's happening again along the Bermondsey Beer Mile: breweries, taprooms and bars — Hiver Taproom and Events Space among them — doing business in the same brick vaults Landmann built for exactly that purpose. The beer is new. The arch has been waiting since 1836.

Quick answers: Hiver Taproom and the Bermondsey Beer Mile

What is the Bermondsey Beer Mile? It's a stretch of railway arches in Bermondsey, South London, running along Druid Street, Enid Street, Almond Road and neighbouring streets, occupied by independent breweries, taprooms and bars — including Hiver Taproom and Events Space.

Where is Hiver Taproom and Events Space located? Hiver Taproom and Events Space is on Stanworth Street, Bermondsey, inside one of the brick arches of the historic 1836 London & Greenwich Railway viaduct.

Why are the Bermondsey Beer Mile arches historically significant? The arches are part of the London & Greenwich Railway viaduct, opened in 1836 — the world's first railway built specifically for passengers and the first entirely elevated railway line ever constructed, engineered by Colonel George Thomas Landmann.

Were the arches always meant to be used as workshops or venues? Yes. Landmann's original plans for the viaduct included renting the arches out as workshops beneath the railway — the same function they serve today as taprooms and bars, including Hiver's.

Can you host events at Hiver Taproom? Hiver's Stanworth Street arch includes a dedicated Events Space alongside the taproom, set inside the same historic brick vault.