Kirkaldy's testing works and testing machine

Kirkaldy's Testing Works and Testing Machine

A former materials testing works designed by Thomas Roger Smith for David Kirkaldy in 1873. The building is constructed of brown and yellow stock brick laid in English bond with buff brick banding and stucco dressings.

The building occupies a slightly tapering site between Southwark Street to the north and Price's Street to the south. It comprises four storeys plus basement and is five bays wide.

The Southwark Street elevation is designed in Italian Romanesque style. It features a dentilled cornice with paired stuccoed brackets surmounted by a low brick parapet. The ground floor has segment-headed openings with stuccoed impost blocks, hood moulds and inset panels below the sills. The door in the second bay from the left has the same treatment with glazed and panelled double doors with transom. Another door on the far right of the building has stucco voussoirs, a heavy bracketed cornice and a pediment inscribed with "Facts not Opinions".

The first and second-floor windows are pairs of round-arched sashes. These have yellow-brick arches with impost blocks, those to the first floor with stuccoed capitals. The windows are set within double-height pilastered round-arched recesses with yellow brick arches. The third-floor windows are grouped in threes (twos in the outer bays) with round yellow brick arches.

The rear elevation on Price's Street is simpler, again of five bays, each with paired windows except the narrow fourth bay from the left which has loading doors to each of the upper storeys. The windows have plain brick openings, those to the ground floor with segmental heads except the third floor which has round arches. Between the second and third floors is a stucco frieze bearing the legend "Kirkaldys Testing & Experimenting Works".

The ground floor contains the testing machine, which runs the length of the building. The machine, 47 feet 7 inches (14.5 metres) in length and weighing approximately 116 tons, works by applying horizontal compression or tension to samples by means of a hydraulic cylinder and ram. Originally steam powered, it was converted to electric power from 1905 onwards. As originally designed, the machine was capable of exerting a pull of 446.6 tons. The machine is supported on brick piers in the basement, with the testing shop's floor consisting of removable timbers to accommodate various types of test. David Kirkaldy's office is located in the north-west corner of the testing floor, with stairs in the south-west corner (a second set of stairs in the south-east corner is modern). The ceiling is supported by cast-iron beams on fluted corbels and four cast-iron columns. Along the north side of the building is a travelling crane. The room retains its original doors, sash windows, fitted shelving for tools and matchboard dado panelling.

The basement contains a Denison chain tester for testing marine chains, added by Kirkaldy in 1906. The caretaker's office and room in the north-west corner retain their fireplace and range. The basement retains its dado panelling, doors and sash windows to the basement light well to Southwark Street. The area at the foot of the stairs has original stone flags.

The lower floors were opened as a museum in 1984. The twentieth-century fittings of the upper floors, which have been converted to commercial office space, are not of special architectural or historic interest.