KIRKALDY EXPERIMENTAL WORKS
Take any one business address. Behind the facade will lie surprising activity. Consider 99 Southwark Street depicted here. In this unique Victorian building is found the quality control machine for metals used in construction, which made possible the safety of many elements of the country's infrastructure. After the Tay Bridge disaster in 1879 this machine tested the material with which it was renewed. Chelsea Bridge is evidence of its testing.
In 1984 the Experimental Works became a museum of engineering; and much more, a flexible space for innovative enterprise.
The window symbolises the birth of new aspects of the social economy of London. On foundations of sound infrastructure, including roads and bridges, our society can and does devise new enterprise that provides opportunity for those who in tough economic conditions lose, or, as for many young people, have not found, jobs.
Urban Economic Development (URBED) and the Industrial Preservation Trust are interesting co-operators behind the facade of No 99. The church affirms in this window that on the foundations of earlier endeavour, new hope and enterprise are born; within which there are fresh opportunities to harness the forces of nature for the benefit of humankind and maintain a reverence for the earth.
