99 Southwark Street
London SE1
Sunday May 6 2018
Jo had visited once before so this time Linda visited with
Roger – as we live in Southwark we thought this would be a straightforward
journey and visit totally possible to complete before lunch…well yes and no. The bus up was a ‘church bus’ with the women
and children of SE London all in their floral Sunday best.
The Museum is run by volunteers and as such is only open on
the first Sunday of each month with occasional evening sessions. As this is Year National Engineering Year it seemed appropriate to visit this quite unique establishment, which is housed
in its purpose built setting now a Grade 2* listed building.. Because there are
stone stairs and slightly uneven floors the tours are all guided and you would
not want to move around unaccompanied.
The tour starts in the basement where there is an 8 minute introductory
video explaining a little about David Kirkaldy, who founded the company and why
he did so. As you might guess from his name David was a Scot and started his
working life as a draftsman in the then very lively shipbuilding yards of the
Clyde. An exciting time it was with the UK at the height of the Industrial
Revolution and with new materials and methods being introduced all the time.
All the trades were involved with carpenters, blacksmiths and stonemasons
contributing to the country’s booming landscapes.
Kirkaldy could already see that what was required was some
independent testing of the materials and
methods being used and he moved to London and set himself up as ‘an independent
tester’. His strapline and selling point was ‘FACTS NOT OPINIONS’ which are
embedded in the building inside and out.
At the time he came to London Southwark was home to a range of
industries – leather for one – then the river and docks nearby and several
railways converging. After a few years
at the Grove Kirkaldy moved his testing apparatus into this building in 1874, which was in effect purpose built around
his largest testing
machine. This can be seen quite clearly from the basement workrooms
where you see the wheel shaped components jutting down from the ceiling.
The practical demonstrations started with the Chapry
(French) and IZOD testing machines – these were set up to test IMPACT and are
in effect large mechanised hammers coming down on the material to be tested which is held in a clamp.
The amount of impact can be increased and there is a calibrated scale to
indicate what this means.
(At this point I should say that I did about one year of
very basic physics 60 years ago, so to say I am ignorant is an
understatement; the two questions I asked were met with patient tolerance) . Kirkaldy never
recommended anything to anybody – all he did was to send them a signed
certificate to indicate at which point the material no longer held. It was then
up to the builder/developer/engineer etc
to make up their own minds. When he started this testing there were no British Standards which were not introduced until 1901 and have been going strong ever since.
The second machine we were shown tested the strength of
concrete under pressure (COMPRESSION) and had been doing so for some time. As
our guide pointed out one of the characteristics of concrete is that it does
not fully set for a couple of weeks.
With tower blocks of course you cannot wait two weeks between each floor
so presumably nowadays there are different ways of measuring the strength of
load bearing surfaces… The machines here are powered by hydraulic pressure. Apparently there used to be a specialist London
firm that just supplied water under pressure suitable for hydraulic
applications (lifts in hotels for example)
but here it was further beefed up by ever smaller pipes (this had to be
explained to me) . Standing around were labelled bits of concrete that had been
tested for the Ministries of Works and Defence and coincidentally for the Lee Green
Shopping Centre, now a rather desolate
shadow of its 1971 self… .
From compression we moved into TENSILE testing , most
particularly that of chains… what had originally been the caretaker’s flat was
annexed into a longer room so that, again under
hydraulic pressure, lengths of chain could be pulled /stretched to their breaking point . This was
heavy work as the WHOLE chain is moved along. ( I had thought maybe they do
‘sample testing’) but on the contrary
each link must be put under pressure as any ‘weak link’ could cause the chain
to break and chains hold up bridges and loads and secure ships everywhere. This
machine is known as the DENTON Chain machine. Our guide pointed out that
Kirkaldy never advertised – firms approached him. An early customer was the
German firm KRUPPS, which certainly would have given the firm prestige.
The building and its contents stayed in the Kirkaldy family
for three generations before closing in the Sixties. Back up the stairs you are
able to see David’s original office, much as it was, dust included, and this is
where the Museum displays his prize-winning drawing of a paddle steamer – the
prize was given by the Royal Academy and remains the only occasion when they
awarded such to a technical piece
Tucked away on the open plan ground floor was a further
small machine designed to test the
hardness of materials ; two versions were available one with an industrial
diamond which is brought down under
pressure onto the material , the other a round steel ball. Both make dents at
certain points from which, via a series of tables and calculations you can work
out at what pressure the material might start to distort.
This lead us to the BIG MACHINE which was able to measure
the strength and the compression tension and torsion as applied to larger
pieces such as girders – both front and back doors can be opened in order for
large and long posts or pillars to be
held secure in the jaws and subject
to series of stress tests.
Apparently some of the bits were so long they hung out into Southwark Street
and an employee had to sit there, day and night sometimes, in order to ensure
the passing traffic did not trip over them…This machine still works and the
volunteers run it at 2PM on their Open Days. It does take up most of this floor
and was built in Leeds by Greenwood & Batley nearly 100 years ago.
Tucked away in another corner was a small, more modern
machine that had been used to test the cords on parachutes and today was able
to demonstrate how far that awful flat plastic tape that you fight to get off parcels would last
under tension – the tension on this occasion produced by a young girl turning a
handle until the tape broke into multiple fibres (the museum jokingly describes
itself as the only museum that likes to break things). We had been given safety
goggles which made me reflect quite how much we owed Kirkaldy and his
successors as they pioneered what we know as ensuring safe structures. We
assume (Grenfell Tower apart) that we can trust that the materials chosen and incorporated
are strong enough for the purposes they are used and have been tested as such.
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Our visit finished at this point and in a spirit of
nostalgia we decided to take a bus 381 back to Peckham for onward
transport The driver explained as we
boarded (the only passengers) that he would not be going to London Bridges as
there was a detour. We spent the next 45 minutes or so trundling round SE1 and
some of SE 16 and went up and down Tower Bridge Road in both directions – I was
very puzzled at this point and asked
him: he said Tooley Street was closed because of the ongoing building around
London Bridge and there were road works also off Southwark Street. We briefly
got back on route only to be diverted again after Canada Water, where a few
more passengers got on. At one point he seemed to think he was a Number 1 bus.
I queried our travelling and checked we were still heading for Peckham at which
point he said ‘My controller expects me to be there in 20 minutes and it will
take me 10 to get round this corner’ (somewhere in Rotherhithe). I went to sit
down and not long afterwards he stopped the bus at Sherwood Gardens, got off
and disappeared. Passengers closer to the driving seat had heard him say ‘well
in that case I am abandoning the bus’. We
all waited about 5 minutes and then got off (he had left both doors open) and
went our various ways. Quite what happened to bus and driver we don’t know but
in all our 546 journeys that we took during the Project nothing like this had
ever happened…
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