William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong

Armstrong was born in Newcastle upon Tyne at 9 Pleasant Row, Shieldfield. Although the house in which he was born no longer exists, an inscribed granite tablet marks the site where it stood. At that time, the area – next to the Pandon Dene – was rural. His father, also called William, was a corn merchant on the Newcastle quayside, who rose through the ranks of Newcastle society to become mayor of the town in 1850. An elder sister, Anne, born in 1802, was named after his mother, the daughter of Addison Potter. Armstrong was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, until he was sixteen, when he was sent to Bishop Auckland Grammar School. While there, he often visited the nearby engineering works of William Ramshaw. During his visits, he met his future wife, Ramshaw's daughter Margaret, six years his senior. and so he was articled to Armorer Donkin, a solicitor friend of his father. He spent five years in London studying law and returned to Newcastle in 1833. He became a partner in Donkin's business in 1835, and the firm became Donkin, Stable and Armstrong. He married Margaret Ramshaw in 1835, and they built a house in Jesmond Dene, on the eastern edge of Newcastle. In 1837, he laid the foundations for the engineering and environmental consultancy which is today known as Wardell Armstrong. ==Change of career==

Armstrong was a very keen angler, and while fishing on the River Dee at Dentdale in the Pennines, he saw a waterwheel in action, supplying power to a marble quarry. It struck Armstrong that much of the available power was being wasted. When he returned to Newcastle, he designed a rotary engine powered by water, and this was built in the High Bridge works of his friend Henry Watson. Little interest was shown in the engine. Armstrong subsequently developed a piston engine instead of a rotary one and decided that it might be suitable for driving a hydraulic crane. In 1846 his work as an amateur scientist was recognized when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. as well as for hydraulic machinery for dock gates in Grimsby. The company soon began to expand. In 1850 the company produced 45 cranes and two years later, 75. It averaged 100 cranes per year for the rest of the century. In 1850 over 300 men were employed at the works, but by 1863 this had risen to 3,800. The company soon branched out into bridge building, one of the first orders being for the Inverness Bridge, completed in 1855. ==Hydraulic accumulator==

Armstrong was responsible for developing the hydraulic accumulator. Where water pressure was not available on site for the use of hydraulic cranes, Armstrong often built high water towers to provide a supply of water at pressure – for instance, the Grimsby Dock Tower. However, when supplying cranes for use at New Holland on the Humber Estuary, he was unable to do this because the foundations consisted of sand. After much careful thought he produced the weighted accumulator, a cast-iron cylinder fitted with a plunger supporting a very heavy weight. The plunger would slowly be raised, drawing in water, until the downward force of the weight was sufficient to force the water below it into pipes at great pressure. The accumulator was a very significant, if unspectacular, invention, which found many applications in the following years. ==Armaments==

(1868–69). In 1854, during the Crimean War, Armstrong read about the difficulties the British Army experienced in manoeuvring its heavy field guns. He decided to design a lighter, more mobile field gun, with greater range and accuracy. He built a breech-loading gun == Warships ==

In 1864 the two companies, W. G. Armstrong & Company and Elswick Ordnance Company merged to form Sir W. G. Armstrong & Company. Armstrong had resigned from his employment with the War Office, so there was no longer a conflict of interest. The company turned its attention to naval guns. In 1867 Armstrong reached an agreement with Charles Mitchell, a shipbuilder in Low Walker, whereby Mitchells would build warships and Elswick would provide the guns. The first ship, in 1868 was HMS Staunch, a gunboat. The ship was originally to be named Renown, but the name was changed in honour of the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Armstrong drove the first and last rivets. The ship was ill-fated, as she was involved in a collision with HMS Camperdown just six years later in 1893 and sank with the loss of 358 men, including Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon. An important customer of the Elswick yard was Japan, which took several cruisers, some of which defeated the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. It was claimed that every Japanese gun used in the battle had been provided by Elswick. Elswick was the only factory in the world that could build a battleship and arm it completely. in 1887 , London The Elswick works continued to prosper, and by 1870 stretched for three-quarters of a mile along the riverside. The population of Elswick, which had been 3,539 in 1851, had increased to 27,800 by 1871. In 1894, Elswick built and installed the steam-driven pumping engines, hydraulic accumulators and hydraulic pumping engines to operate London's Tower Bridge. In 1897 the company merged with the company of Armstrong's old rival, Joseph Whitworth, and became Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd. Whitworth was by this time dead. Armstrong gathered many excellent engineers at Elswick. Notable among them were Andrew Noble and George Wightwick Rendel, whose design of gun-mountings and hydraulic control of gun-turrets were adopted worldwide. Rendel introduced the cruiser as a naval vessel. There was great rivalry and dislike between Noble and Rendel, which became open after Armstrong's death. ==Cragside==

From 1863 onwards, although Armstrong remained the head of his company, he became less involved in its day-to-day running. He appointed several very able men to senior positions and they continued his work. When he married, he acquired a house called Jesmond Dean (sic), which is now demolished, and not to be confused with the nearby Jesmond Dene House. Armstrong's house was to the west of Jesmond Dene, Newcastle, and thus not far from his birthplace, and he began to landscape and improve land that he bought within the Dene. In 1860 he paid local architect John Dobson to design a Banqueting Hall overlooking the Dene, which still survives, though it is now roofless. His house close to Newcastle was convenient for his practice as a solicitor and his work as an industrialist, but when he had more spare time he longed for a house in the country. He had often visited Rothbury as a child, when he was afflicted by a severe cough, and he had fond memories of the area. In 1863 he bought some land in a steep-sided, narrow valley where the Debdon Burn flows towards the River Coquet near Rothbury. He had the land cleared and supervised the building of a house perched on a ledge of rock, overlooking the burn. He also supervised a programme of planting trees and mosses so as to cover the rocky hillside with vegetation. His new house was called Cragside, and over the years Armstrong added to the Cragside estate. Eventually the estate was and had seven million trees planted, together with five artificial lakes and of carriage drives, and his demonstration centre at Cragend Farm Hydraulic Silo. The lakes were used to generate hydro-electricity, and the house was the first in the world to be lit by hydro-electricity, using incandescent lamps provided by the inventor Joseph Swan. As Armstrong spent less and less time at the Elswick works, he spent more and more time at Cragside, and it became his main home. In 1869 he commissioned the celebrated architect Richard Norman Shaw to enlarge and improve the house, and this was done over a period of 15 years. In 1883 Armstrong gave Jesmond Dene, together with its banqueting hall to the city of Newcastle. He retained his house next to the Dene. Armstrong entertained several eminent guests at Cragside, including the Shah of Persia, the King of Siam, the prime minister of China and the Prince and Princess of Wales. ==Later life==

which he helped pay for. In 1873 he served as High Sheriff of Northumberland. He was President of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers from 1872 to 1875. He was elected as the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in December 1881 and served in that capacity for the next year. He was conferred with Honorary Membership of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland in 1884. In 1886, he was persuaded to stand as a Unionist Liberal candidate for Newcastle, but was unsuccessful, coming third in the election. That same year he was presented with the Freedom of the City of Newcastle. In 1887 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Armstrong, of Cragside in the County of Northumberland. His last great project, begun in 1894, was the purchase and restoration of the huge Bamburgh Castle on the Northumberland coast, which remains in the hands of the Armstrong family. His wife, Margaret, died in September 1893, at their house in Jesmond. Armstrong died at Cragside on 27 December 1900, aged ninety. He was buried in Rothbury churchyard, alongside his wife. The couple had no children, and Armstrong's heir was his great-nephew William Watson-Armstrong. He was succeeded as chairman of the company by his one-time protégé, Andrew Noble. Such was Armstrong's fame as a gun-maker that he is thought to be a possible model for George Bernard Shaw's arms magnate in Major Barbara. The title character in Iain Pears' historical-mystery novel ''Stone's Fall'' also has similarities to Armstrong. ==His attitude to armaments==

There is no evidence that Armstrong agonised over his decision to go into armament production. He once said: "If I thought that war would be fomented, or the interests of humanity suffer, by what I have done, I would greatly regret it. I have no such apprehension." He also said: "It is our province, as engineers to make the forces of matter obedient to the will of man; those who use the means we supply must be responsible for their legitimate application." ==Views on renewable energy==

Armstrong advocated the use of renewable energy. Stating that coal "was used wastefully and extravagantly in all its applications", he predicted in 1863 that Britain would cease to produce coal within two centuries. ==The benefactor==

Armstrong donated the long wooded gorge of Jesmond Dene to the people of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1883, as well as Armstrong Bridge and Armstrong Park nearby. He was involved in the foundation in 1871 of the College of Physical Science – a forerunner of the University of Newcastle, renamed Armstrong College in 1906. He was President of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1860 until his death, as well as twice president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Armstrong gave £11,500 towards the building of Newcastle's Hancock Natural History Museum, which was completed in 1882. This sum is equivalent to over £555,000 in 2010. Lord Armstrong's generosity extended beyond his death. In 1901 his heir, William Watson-Armstrong gave £100,000 (equivalent to £ in ), for the building of the new Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne. Its original 1753 building at Forth Banks near the River Tyne was inadequate and impossible to expand. In 1903 the barony of Armstrong was revived in favour of William Watson-Armstrong. ==Honours==

• In 1846 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). • In 1850 he received the Telford Medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers. • In 1859 William Armstrong was knighted as a Knight Bachelor (Kt). • He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the Civil Division • In 1874 he was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society. • In 1878 he received the Albert Medal from the Royal Society of Arts. • In 1886 he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Newcastle. • In 1887 he was raised to the peerage as a Hereditary peer, allowing him to sit in the House of Lords. He took the title Baron Armstrong, of Cragside in the County of Northumberland. • In 1887 he was elected to honorary membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society • In 1891 he received the Bessemer Gold Medal from the Iron and Steel Institute. ;Honorary Degrees ==Arms==

{{Infobox COA wide Publications • • • , Plates: 17–24 ==References==