During the nineteenth century, Tyneside stood at the forefront of Britain’s industrial development. Capital was generated from the mining of coal, shipbuilding and heavy engineering. The region was home to industrial pioneers and inventors.

Foremost among Newcastle industrialists was William George Armstrong, who was a brilliant inventor, a dominant figure in Newcastle’s cultural sphere and a major architectural patron. He was born on 26 November 1810 at 9 Pleasant Row, Shieldfield, the second child of William Armstrong (1778-1857), a successful clerk in a firm of corn merchants. Armstrong was educated at a grammar school in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. Despite his interest in engineering, he initially entered the legal profession, joining Armorer Donkin’s firm of solicitors, and became a partner in the firm in 1833. Armstrong’s background was therefore both mercantile and professional: he was neither the nouveau riche industrialist of legend, nor the self-made man celebrated in popular myths of Newcastle.

Pursuing his technological interests, Armstrong experimented with hydraulics and patented a design for a hydraulic crane which he demonstrated on Newcastle Quayside in 1846. With the help of Donkin he purchased five and a half acres of land at Elswick the following year, and together with Donkin, George Cruddas, Addison Potter and Richard Lambert he set up the firm of W.G. Armstrong and Company. The building of Elswick Works was commenced in May 1847 and the new workshops were built with stone obtained from Richard Grainger. Small businesses such as the Benwell Fishery and the Elswick Copperas Works were purchased and closed down to make way for the new installation. Eventually the Elswick Works extended from Elswick to Scotswood, a distance of three miles. The works employed 3,800 men, making it Newcastle’s largest single employer in the field of engineering.

Armstrong began manufacturing artillery in 1855, primarily in response to the Crimean War (1853-6). The ordnance used by the British Army had changed little since Waterloo, but Armstrong realised that a rifled barrel and elongated projectile would improve accuracy. He developed a breech-loaded gun in which the barrel was wrapped in welded helical coils, which reduced the weight without compromising strength. Recognised as the finest of its kind in the world, the gun revolutionised ordnance production. The design was adopted by the War Office in 1858 and Armstrong received orders from the government totalling £1,067,000. Armstrong granted the rights of this gun to the nation, for which he received a knighthood in 1859. He was appointed Engineer of Rifled Ordnance to the War Department and in order to avoid a conflict of interests he founded a separate company, the Elswick Ordnance Works, in which he was not financially involved. He did, however, appoint the ballistics expert Captain Andrew Noble as joint manager with George Rendel. When the government cancelled its contract with the Elswick Ordnance Works in 1862, the company was able to operate without restrictions. The Armstrong gun was sold around the world and was used by both sides in the American Civil War. At the outbreak of war in 1914 Armstrong Whitworth (as the firm was known after merging with Joseph Whitworth of Manchester in 1897) was one of a small number of armaments manufacturers chosen by David Lloyd George to supply weapons to the armed forces, and Armstrong’s 60-pound gun was used on the Western Front.

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