Wonder of its age

Nestled in the Northumbrian hills, Cragside looms large through the trees. JULIAN HUMPHRYS explores the extraordinary Victorian mansion and gardens which were masterminded by an equally extraordinary engineer

- JULIAN HUMPHRYS

Take the road up on the moors above the Northumberland town of Alnwick, and you’ll be driving across some of England’s wildest, most barren countryside. But just before you reach the village of Rothbury, everything briefly changes. An extensive stretch of woodland opens up to reveal an attractive lake. Above it to the right, largely hidden from view by more trees, perches a large house. This is Cragside, the remarkable home of William Armstrong (1810–1900), one of the richest industrialists in Victorian Britain, and the first scientist to be raised to the peerage.

Armstrong had originally trained as a solicitor, but his true love had always been engineering. In 1847 he completed the move from law to industry, buying the land at Elswick in Newcastle that he would develop into the hub of a vast manufacturing empire. At its height Armstrong’s company employed around 25,000 people, producing hydraulic cranes and machinery (including the mechanism that operates London’s Tower Bridge), armaments, and warships.