‘FACTS NOT OPINIONS’: STRETCHED TO THE LIMIT

Step back in time and enter the world’s first Victorian Testing and Experimenting Works on London’s Bankside for an evocative and surreal new site-responsive performance.

Expect to be tested to your limits…

Coming soon...
Renowned illustrator, set designer and creative director Emma Rios will be leading an educational programme,; a series of arts and engineering workshops for children and there will also be guided tours of the museum. Visitors will be taken back in time to the industrial revolution when building specimens from all over the world were tested to destruction in Kirkaldy’s Workshop. Emma, who is known for her paper sculpting, illustrations and fashion installations, has worked with clients ranging from Tatler and the Wall Street Journal to the V&A and Historic Royal Palaces, Liberty, Harrods as well as fashion brands including Myla and Saloni.

Dates
March 30, 31 and April 1 2023

Location
Kirkaldy Testing Works, 99 Southwark Street, London, SE1 OJF

Running time
1 hour

Sneak inside one of London’s most unusual locations, after-hours, for a site-responsive experience.

Kirkaldy’s Testing Works - an historic, Grade II* former workshop and museum in the heart of Bankside - opened its doors for five exclusive, fun and slightly surreal pop-up performances over three days.

Set in the world’s first independent, commercial materials testing works, audiences joined a surprise extravaganza that was 200 years in the planning. Visitors mingled with eccentric Victorian characters and tested their mettle in an entertaining hour-long immersive drama.

What was the experience:

Celebrated Victorian engineer David Kirkaldy was having a surprise party. This immersive experience offered guests the opportunity to secretly join the celebrations. Once inside The Testing and Experimenting Works, their strength and wiles were challenged against Kirkaldy's scrutiny and the mighty million-pound Universal Testing machine… A proper Victorian knees-up laid in wait for those who passed the test.

Guests weaved their way through rooms in the unique and atmospheric former 19th century factory including Kirkaldy’s office, the workshop and basement, all were filled with music, soundscapes and the Scottish engineer’s original testing machines, including the 14.5m-long Universal Testing Machine he had designed, which was commissioned and patented in 1863.

‘Facts not Opinions’: Stretched to the Limit was created by theatre makers and performers Sammy Kissin and Al Barclay, as part of Blackfriars Stories commissioned by Southwark Council.

It was inspired by the link between Blackfriars Bridge and Kirkaldy’s Testing Works to mark the 202nd anniversary of David Kirkaldy’s birth.

Sammy, who studied at LAMDA and Manchester University, said: “We really wanted to honour Kirkaldy’s world view that ‘Facts not Opinions’ matter. It is a celebration of the dynamism of the man, that idea of strength and how strength can be tested.”

Guildhall alumni Al added: “We have all been tested to destruction recently. We were interested in confronting this in a place designed to break the indestructible – and question, who are we?”

The present Blackfriars’ Bridge is the second bridge to bear that name; the first being deemed unsafe due to poor construction. The new bridge, built in 1869, employed the newly established Testing and Experimenting Works on Southwark Street to test its wrought iron framework and ensure its long-term viability.

Renowned illustrator, set designer and creative director Emma Rios will be leading an educational programme,; a series of arts and engineering workshops for children and there will also be guided tours of the museum. Visitors will be taken back in time to the industrial revolution when building specimens from all over the world were tested to destruction in Kirkaldy’s Workshop.

Emma, who is known for her paper sculpting, illustrations and fashion installations, has worked with clients ranging from Tatler and the Wall Street Journal to the V&A and Historic Royal Palaces, Liberty, Harrods as well as fashion brands including Myla and Saloni.

A museum has been running at the site since 1984 run entirely by a team of volunteers. It is one of the few museums in the world where you can get up close and hands on with working, historic machines – and yes, break something!

Kirkaldy opened the world’s first purpose-built independent testing site at 99 Southwark Street, London in 1874. He pioneered a real change in thinking – that all components had to be tested to a pre-existing standard, and facts were more important than opinions. The famous inscription above the door reads ‘Facts not Opinions’.

Today Kirkaldy’s advances in science and engineering are celebrated by the Institution for Civil Engineers and the Engineering Hall of Fame.

ABOUT SAMMY KISSIN

“Kissin is almost like a modern-day Marlowe, and it’s so rare to hear performance prose of such beauty crop up on the London new writing scene” - Grumpy Gay Critic

Sammy writes, performs, and produces. She is also co-artist director of shadow theatre company Shadowboxer Theatre and has recently made work for The Little Angel Theatre and The Battersea Arts Centre.

Sammy studied at LAMDA and Manchester University and has created shows for Old Vic New Voices, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Royal Opera House, VAULT Festival, Merge Festival and The Old Red Lion. Her work includes short stories, radio, and shadow puppetry, as well as immersive and site-specific productions for Punchdrunk Enrichment.

Sammy is delighted to be returning to The Kirkaldy Testing Museum to create this new immersive experience.

www.shadowboxertheatre.com

www.sammykissin.co.uk

ABOUT Al Barclay

Al is an actor, writer, and theatre maker. Leaving Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2002, he immediately began combining a film career with the joy of immersive theatre. While filming in Bright Young Things directed by Stephen Fry, he was building strange wonders with Rabbit (now Coney) at BAC. Recent credits include The Crown and Slow Horses, as well as his work with Shakespeare with which he has extensively toured Europe and America. He regularly collaborates with interdisciplinary artists and established companies to make happenings and tales of the unexpected, and in the last month has filmed for Disney and ZDF Germany.

About Kirkaldy’s Testing Works

“Not enough people know the story yet of Kirkaldy. It is a direct link to the industrial past of Bankside, a clue to the importance of this area in forging new ideas and bringing them to the world.”

– Donald Hyslop, Chair, Better Bankside

The Industrial Revolution transformed the world, but engineers found themselves on a crash course in understanding the forces affecting new construction materials. Variable quality in materials had catastrophic results.

The collapse of a new railway bridge over the river Dee near Chester in 1847and of the Tay Bridge in 1879 showed the need for engineers to rely on thorough, scrupulous testing. In other words, on ‘Facts not Opinions’.

David Kirkaldy completely transformed the way materials are tested – even in his own lifetime. More than 100 years later his colossal Universal Testing Machine is an extraordinary physical presence at the heart of Kirkaldy’s Testing Works.

In 1863 David Kirkaldy patented his design for the 47 feet and 7-inch Universal Testing Machine — it had to be big enough to test whole, often enormous, building components. He commissioned Greenwood and Batley of Leeds to build his machine and was so impatient with the speed of manufacture he had the unfinished machine delivered to London to be completed.

On 1 January 1866 he opened his first Testing Works close to Southwark Street at The Grove.

The Universal Testing Machine works horizontally, with a water-hydraulic cylinder and ram exerting loads of up to 440 tons – one million pounds – on the specimen being tested. The water pressure originally came from a steam engine and from 1905 from the London Hydraulic Power Company, with pressure boosted by a hydraulic intensifier, which can still be seen in the basement. Today a small electric pump does the hard work.

For years this was the only independent testing facility anywhere in the world. Samples arrived as soon as he opened for business – from the nearby Blackfriars Bridge to the USA, where James Eads was planning a trailblazing new steel bridge for the Mississippi. Larger premises were soon needed.

The construction of a new major route through Southwark meant the Universal Testing Machine could be relocated to purpose-built Testing Works, designed by architect Thomas Roger Smith at 99 Southwark Street. It has remained here ever since.

For further information visit https://www.testingworks.org.uk

“Make sure you visit. This is an opportunity to see a Victorian Testing Machine in action. Hats off to this stupendous preservation effort”

– Pauline, Google reviews

Kirkaldy’s Testing Work

About Blackfriars Stories

Blackfriars Stories is a local events programme coordinated by Southwark Council. Developed and run in conjunction with local community groups, businesses, developers and public sector organisations in the neighbourhood, Blackfriars Stories began in 2014. Since then, it has encompassed a diverse range of events from street parades and carnivals through to immersive theatre and public art. Paused during the pandemic, Blackfriars Stories made its return with a new production, Ghosts on a Wire, in 2021.

www.southwark.gov.uk