This is Britain’s largest clown school, and the only place one where you can be awarded a degree (BA Hons) from a man in an orange wig and oversized shoes as you leap through a ring of fire.

Thank sawdust for Circus Space, a Hoxton-based centre of education and exhibition of the finest traditional circus arts. Once a Victorian power station, the Vestry of St Leonard Shoreditch Electric Light Station, was rescued from collapse in 1994 and re-appropriated to the capital’s home of Big Top bravado. 

The last vestiges of its former use can be seen in an engraving above the door - words which give vitality to the weary acrobat, “e pulvere lux et vis,” or “Out of the dust, light and power”. Taking into account that the Borough of Shoreditch motto is “More Light, More Power”, it is not hard to see how central this building has always been.