William Armstrong , 1st Baron Armstrong William George Armstrong , 1st Baron Armstrong , CB , FRS ( 26 November 1810 – 27 December 1900 ) was an effective Tyneside industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing empire . Early life . Armstrong was born in Newcastle upon Tyne , at 9 Pleasant Row , Shieldfield , about a mile from the city centre . Although the house no longer exists , an inscribed granite tablet marks the spot at which the house in which he was born once 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 became mayor of Newcastle in 1850 . An older sister , Anne , born in 1802 , was named after his mother , the daughter of Addison Potter . Armstrong was educated at private schools in Newcastle and Whickham , near Gateshead , 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 . Armstrong ’ s father was set on him following a career in the law , and so he was articled to Armorer Donkin , a solicitor friend of his father ’ s . He spent five years in London studying law and returned to Newcastle in 1833 . In 1835 he became a partner in Donkin ’ s business and the firm became Donkin , Stable and Armstrong . Armstrong married Margaret Ramshaw in 1835 , and they built a house in Jesmond Dene , on the eastern edge of Newcastle . Armstrong worked for eleven years as a solicitor , but during his spare time he showed great interest in engineering . 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 . Unfortunately , 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 . In 1845 a scheme was set in motion to provide piped water from distant reservoirs to the households of Newcastle . Armstrong was involved in this scheme and he proposed to Newcastle Corporation that the excess water pressure in the lower part of town could be used to power a Quayside crane specially adapted by himself . He claimed that his hydraulic crane could unload ships faster and more cheaply than conventional cranes . The Corporation agreed to his suggestion , and the experiment proved so successful that three more hydraulic cranes were installed on the Quayside . The success of his hydraulic crane led Armstrong to consider setting up a business to manufacture cranes and other hydraulic equipment . He therefore resigned from his legal practice . Donkin , his legal colleague , supported him in his career move , providing financial backing for the new venture . In 1847 the firm of W . G . Armstrong & Company bought of land alongside the river at Elswick , near Newcastle , and began to build a factory there . The new company received orders for hydraulic cranes from Edinburgh and Northern Railways and from Liverpool Docks , 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 . 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 hydraulic 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 . 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 with a strong , rifled barrel made from wrought iron wrapped around a steel inner lining , designed to fire a shell rather than a ball . In 1855 he had a five - pounder ready for inspection by a government committee . The gun proved successful in trials , but the committee thought a higher caliber gun was needed , so Armstrong built an 18 - pounder on the same design . After trials , this gun was declared to be superior to all its rivals . Armstrong surrendered the patent for the gun to the British government , rather than profit from its design . As a result he was created a Knight Bachelor and in 1859 was presented to Queen Victoria . Armstrong became employed as Engineer of Rifled Ordnance to the War Department . In order to avoid a conflict of interests if his own company were to manufacture armaments , Armstrong created a separate company , called Elswick Ordnance Company , in which he had no financial involvement . The new company agreed to manufacture armaments for the British government and no other . Under his new position , Armstrong worked to bring the old Woolwich Arsenal up to date so that it could build guns designed at Elswick . However , just when it looked as if the new gun was about to become a great success , a great deal of opposition to the gun arose , both inside the army and from rival arms manufacturers , particularly Joseph Whitworth of Manchester . Stories were publicised that the new gun was too difficult to use , that it was too expensive , that it was dangerous to use , that it frequently needed repair and so on . All of this smacked of a concerted campaign against Armstrong . Armstrong was able to refute all of these claims in front of various government committees , but he found the constant criticism very wearying and depressing . In 1862 the government decided to stop ordering the new gun and return to muzzle loaders . Also , because of a drop in demand , future orders for guns would be supplied from Woolwich , leaving Elswick without new business . Compensation was eventually agreed with the government for the loss of business to the company . Unfortunately , the government would not release the company from its agreement not to sell armaments abroad , so that avenue was closed to it . Eventually , the restriction was relaxed , and the company was able to sell guns to both sides in the American Civil War . 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 . In 1876 , because the 18th - century bridge at Newcastle restricted access by ships to the Elswick works , Armstrong ’ s company paid for a new Swing Bridge to be built , so that warships could have their guns fitted at Elswick . In 1882 Armstrong ’ s company merged with Mitchells to form Sir William Armstrong , Mitchell and Co . Ltd . and in 1884 a shipyard opened at Elswick to specialise in warship production . The first vessels produced were the torpedo cruisers " Panther " and " Leopard " for the Austro - Hungarian Navy . The first battleship produced at Elswick was H . M . S " Victoria " , launched in 1887 . 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 H . M . S . " Camperdown " 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 was provided by Elswick . Elswick was the only factory in the world that could build a battleship and arm it completely . The Elswick works continued to prosper , and by 1870 it stretched for three - quarters of a mile along the riverside . The population of Elswick , which was 3 , 539 in 1851 , had increased by 1871 to 27 , 800 . 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 Jesmond Dene House , a house to the west of Jesmond Dene , Newcastle and 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 in the Dene . 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 . 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 . In 1873 he served as High Sheriff of Northumberland . 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 protégée , 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 England would cease to produce coal within two centuries . As well as advocating the use of hydroelectricity , he also supported solar power , stating that the solar energy received by in tropical areas would " exert the amazing power of 4000 horses acting for nearly nine hours every day " 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 . The University of Newcastle was originally founded by Lord Armstrong in 1871 as the College of Physical Science , later Armstrong College in 1904 . He was 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 was an enormous sum 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 ( £ as of 2018 ) , for the building of the new Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne . Its original 1753 building at Forth Banks near the river Tyne were inadequate and impossible to expand . In 1903 the barony of Armstrong was revived in favour of William Watson - Armstrong .