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Southwark Street, LONDON, SE1 0JE

This building at 99 Southwark St was built in 1874 specifically to house "Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works". It was a place where experiments took place on materials to determine their strength. This was done primarily using Kirkaldy's own design of testing machine. The building has a museum which houses the machine on the ground floor and the museum is open on special days only

Striking wedge-shaped building tapering to a corner at Prices Street. Striped voussoirs are the dominant motif. According to the listing, it was built as a fire station in 1867-68. Grade II listed. Now (thin) flats.

A grade II*(star) listed building, including the original hydraulic testing machine for materials strength. It operated here commercially 1873 - 1972. It is now a museum.

The outside tables belong to a recently built Hilton Hotel. Google street view in October 2008 shows this as a classic city centre brownfield site. 'Ripe for development'.

Now apparently access to offices on upper floors of the former Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works, whose operating floors remain as a museum. A grade II*(star) listed building, 1873. 'Facts not Opinions' is over the door.

No. 89 was built in around 1880. It is a handsome building with lots of detail and contrasting materials and colours. Grade II listed. Pevsner describes the architecture of Southwark Street as representing "High Victorian Southwark and includes some of the most consistent stretches of that period still remaining in London".

For a wider view of this historic grade 2* listed building built in 1873, see Image It is currently a museum, run by volunteers and open once a month on a Sunday.

Former warehouse of the 1870s with chunky pilasters/columns and slender colonnettes at the bottom and a 'Lombardic' frieze at the top. Grade II listed. Now offices.

The chimney of Tate modern can be seen in the background.

David Kirkaldy's Testing and Experimenting Works at 99 Southwark Street set international standards in testing materials from which everyone’s everyday life benefits today. Today, this unique Victorian workshop keeps alive our direct link with Kirkaldy's innovation, at the heart of this bustling commercial district of London. The Kirkaldy Testing Museum preserves Kirkaldy's unique Universal Testing Machine - the huge hydraulic powered machine he designed and had built in Leeds - in full working order in the premises he built to house it. As well as presenting the story of the family who ran the business for almost 100 years and of the wider development of materials testing, the workshop and the Universal Testing Machine provide a unique crucible for new experimentation and collaboration - which can inspire future generations of scientists and artists alike to continue enquiring into the properties of the materials on which we build our lives. Taken from the website given to the Works