The National Lift Tower (previously called the Express Lift Tower) is a lift-testing tower built by the Express Lift Company (a lifts division of the General Electric Company (GEC)) off the Weedon Road in Northampton, England. The structure was commissioned in 1978 with construction commencing in 1980, and was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 12 November 1982. It has been a Grade II Listed Building since 1997. The tower can be viewed from Arbury Hill, the highest point in Northamptonshire. Background The site The tower is in St James End, west of Northampton town centre. The area is named after Northampton Abbey, an Augustinian monastery dedicated to St James, which was founded in 1104–05. When the former Express Lift factory, which included the lift-testing tower, was redeveloped for housing in 1999–2000, excavations were carried out to determine the location and remains of any parts of the abbey. A cemetery of burials was excavated during winter 2000–01. The bones were analysed to determine the health and burial practices in the late-medieval population of Northampton. Construction Designed by architect Maurice Walton of Stimpson Walton Bond, the tower is tall, in diameter at the base and tapers to at the top. The only lift-testing tower in Britain, and one of only two in Europe, it was granted Grade II listed building status on 30 October 1997, making it the youngest listed building in the UK at the time. The building's small, obround shaped windows were a design motif of the Express Lift Company, whose lift control panels featured control buttons and floor indicators of the same shape. In January 1997, the tower fell out of use after Express was taken over by Otis (who typically used its test facilities in the United States). In 1999, the tower and surrounding land was sold to Wilcon Homes for development. From the time it was built, one shaft was specifically used by the British Standards Institution (BSI) for type testing of lift safety components at the time under the BS 5655 and BS EN81 standards. Safety Gear testing involved putting the lift cars (frame) into free fall conditions with rated mass at tripping speeds as required by the designers of the safety gear to ensure the lift cars decelerated and stopped within the requirements of the standard. Buffer testing involved impacting them with the maximum and minimum mass at tripping speeds to ensure decelerations