In a time of fake news and disinformation, we yearn for facts. ‘Facts not opinions.’ These very words are carved into stone above a Bankside door. Behind the door hide contraptions that test the materials that built the world. Sydney Harbour Bridge. Wembley Stadium. The Skylon. They owe it all to Kirkaldy’s Testing Works.
Sarah & Jane invite us in to break something. To play tug-o-war with steel until it snaps. To pummel concrete dog-bones. To crash-test a parachute. Strength, hardness, elasticity & tension. Sounds like a Marvel movie.
So, how did these two wonderful women, and this 116ton brute, end up here?
Turns out they both grew up with architect dads. Snap (being the operative word). As kids, they built things with Lego & Meccano to withstand the knocks of family life. And here they are today, guardians of monster destruction engines that map the DNA of world-famous bridges, buildings, boats and beams.
Sarah sets the scene. “Dad designed theatres and schools that I was always taken to as a child, so I became interested in how places work. Fast forward to 2013, I’d been working in Bankside a while, writing about the place, and a trustee post came up. In this grade II* listed building in full working order. What a privilege. There’s nowhere on Earth like Kirkaldy.”
The building was built around the machine. It’s so colossal, it can’t move. Thank Thomas Roger Smith. He designed 99 Southwark Street in 1874 as an engineer’s paradise. A 5-floor factory with a ‘museum of fractures’ on floors 2 &3.
As Jane says, “A level physics students are in awe of Kirkaldy. Materials is on the syllabus. “It’s much more fun doing live experiments with industrial-scale historic working machines, instead of using elastic bands in their classrooms.”
Sarah adds, “I first came here, to a gig, electronica and light projections. It blew my mind. This is an extraordinary learning space, part of Bankside’s wider alternative campus. Our Material Difference program is hands on, and hands dirty. It brings STEM & STEAM to life. Artists, scientists, designers, engineers, they get a massive buzz from Kirkaldy.”
So, who was the founder, David Kirkaldy? His obituary reads ‘honest as the sun, fearless as a Viking. The best hated man in London.’ A Dundee lad who cut his cloth as a draughtsman at Glasgow’s Vulcan Shipyard. His drawings graced the Louvre and the RA Summer Exhibition – the first time an engineering drawing was called a work of art. He scoured the debris of the Tay Bridge disaster to prove the design, build and spec was at fault. He set scientific standards. He made ‘fit for purpose’ finally make sense. Bridges stopped collapsing. Boilers stopped exploding. Engineers trusted materials. And Kirkaldy saved lives.
Why here, why then? In the 1870s, Bankside had it all. Hyper-industrialization. Radical new industries making waves. Stellar transport links. Access to Parliament to sway those making huge infrastructure decisions. Kirkaldy’s Testing & Experimenting Works and Bankside were meant to be.
Sarah, Jane and the other staff give up their time, talent & wisdom for the love of the place. They want more local laypeople (less geeky) to step forward and show visitors how to break stuff. In doing so, they can fire up the next generation of engineers.
If you feel like a bit of forensic creativity in your lunchbreak, or just some afterschool destruction of innocent metal, get in touch.
