My bedroom wall has water penetration too, but nobody has offered it a Grade II* listing.
LONDON, England – It has been raining sideways since breakfast, the radiator in the hall is making the noise of a man being told bad news, and there is a patch of damp on my bedroom wall in the shape of a surprised Wales. I have decided to treat the whole day as a lab report. Facts, not opinions.
Grievances, in order of dampness
- The patch on the wall, which has gained about a centimetre of coastline since Sunday.
- Our landlord, Mr Brough, who says it is “condensation” in the tone of a man reading out a verdict.
- The bathroom window, which only closes if you lean on it and say a short prayer.
- My pottery bowls, which are currently drying on the radiator and are therefore the only objects in the flat doing any good.
- The fact that I have just read about a building with water damage that gets a proper news story, and mine gets a reply that says “noted”.
The news from Southwark
That last one is because of ianVisits reporting that Kirkaldy’s Testing Works in Southwark has gone on the Heritage at Risk Register. It is a Victorian engineering laboratory, Grade II* listed, built in 1873, and it houses the world’s earliest purpose-built independent commercial materials testing laboratory. Its trouble is water getting through its Italian Romanesque exterior, and extensive damp in the basement. It is one of sixteen London buildings newly added to Historic England’s register this year.
I have never felt so seen by a building. It also has a machine, David Kirkaldy’s large Universal Testing Machine, which still works and is regularly demonstrated to visitors. Over the entrance are the words “facts not opinions”. I would like those words on the front door of our flat, to be read by Mr Brough on his way in.
Why a history student cares about a testing machine
Dr Penhallow has set us an essay on Victorian engineering and public trust, and the report says components from the Tay Bridge, which collapsed in 1879, were among the objects examined at the works. That is the kind of detail a tutor circles in green pen and writes “yes” next to. I now have a first paragraph, which is more than I had at breakfast.
My own testing programme is smaller. I have made four mugs this term, and I test them using the Kirkaldy method, which I have adapted slightly to mean dropping them on the kitchen floor. One survived. Our flatmate Cerys says that is a 25 percent pass rate, and also asked me to stop doing it before eight in the morning. I have recorded her opinion and I have decided it is not a fact.
Afternoon: the register, with numbers
The register is not only bad news. London has 596 buildings on it in 2026, and 24 sites were removed during the year after their futures were secured. Holly House and Prudhoe House on Tottenham High Road have been restored by Tottenham Hotspur Football Club and are now home to 14 subsidised artists’ studios, two galleries and a cafe run by the Sarabande Foundation. The former police station in East Ham is now teaching space for a sixth form centre, the Italian Terraces in Crystal Palace Park have been repaired, and the Grotto in Wanstead Park has been stabilised with brickwork repairs and new supports.
Historic England’s two chief executives said that putting a building back to use is the best way to protect it. I find that moving. A building wants to be used, like a mug, like a flat. I told this to Cerys and she said she wanted her mug back.
The calf barn comparison
I got some perspective from a story about a calf barn that finally got a fresh air system while the farmer still breathes tractor exhaust. That is the sort of thing that happens when you invest in the building and forget the person. Our flat is the reverse. We have a lot of person and no building.
Evening: the clay
I took my wobbly bowl to the Thursday clay group at the community hall, where nine of us sit in aprons and pretend to be calm. I told the group about the register, and a retired man called Ifor, who has been throwing pots since before I was born, said that the secret of a good building and a good bowl is the same: you keep the water out of the bottom. He then picked up my bowl and said mine was “very brave”.
I wrote the evening up for more of my daily notes at The London Prat, which has a feature on English news told the long way round that I think is the nearest anyone has come to my situation. If you want a reliable way to check whether something you have read is real, the paper’s checklist for telling satire from real news is short and has good manners.
I came home to find that the damp patch has not moved, which I choose to see as a small win. I have taped a note to the wall that says “facts not opinions” and under it, in smaller letters, “please do not paint over this”. For anyone who wants to read about more historic sites in trouble, the ianVisits archive of articles is a good place to lose an evening. Mine will be spent with a towel and a pencil, marking the edge of Wales.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/