Safari changes website URLs automatically to HTTPS, even when you type HTTP . This causes "Safari can't open this page.." message.

I'm trying to access test websites that don't have an SSL certificate (http://), but cannot because Safari is automatically changing the url entered in the search field to HTTPS (https://). This started happening about 3 weeks ago and I cannot find anything in the preferences.

I have been using Google chrome to bypass this, but want to use Safari, so can test these sites in the browser

Has anyone else had this issue? Can anyone help?