Old No 2 Lab

The old Number Two Lab at Kandos Cement Works occupies a side room near the kiln building, set up as a quality-testing space at some earlier point in the plant's life and superseded by newer labs in later decades. The room has the layout of an industrial laboratory: a long perimeter bench against three walls, sink, gas taps, a separate steel bench for heavier equipment, and a row of cabinets above the bench at one end. The fittings are heavier than the equivalent in the newer labs: cast-iron sink, timber cabinet doors, glass-fronted upper cupboards. Some of the glassware has been left in place on the bench, beakers and graduated cylinders stacked in a wire rack. A pendant light hangs from the ceiling on a braided cord. The tiles on the floor are pale industrial, marked here and there from spilled reagent.

Cement works of Kandos's age accumulated successive generations of laboratory plant as testing technology changed. Wet chemistry in the early decades gave way to more automated analytical methods through the second half of the twentieth century. Older labs like this one were typically retained for specialised testing or simply left intact once the newer plant came online. Kandos Cement Works opened in August 1916 and ran for 95 years until closure in September 2011. The old lab has stayed in place since, with its glassware and the heavier fixtures broadly as they were on the day the lab itself was finally retired.