William George Armstrong, later Lord Armstrong, transformed industrial engineering and the armaments industry in Britain and worldwide. His journey began when, while fishing on the River Dee, Armstrong witnessed a waterwheel driving machinery and became fascinated with the potential of harnessing waterpower efficiently. After several experiments, he finally designed a hydraulic system which he then applied to cranes he built on the Newcastle Quayside and patented in 1846. Operating initially as the Newcastle Cranage Company, Armstrong had started an industry in which he was to become a giant, in both the UK and the rest of the world.
W.G. Armstrong & Co Ltd - 1847
Armstrong established W.G. Armstrong & Co Ltd in 1847 on a five-acre site at Elswick on the Tyne, near Newcastle. These initial works, known later as The Great Elswick Works, were ideally located beside the North Eastern Railway line that ran between Newcastle in the east and Carlisle in the west. The success of his hydraulic cranes prompted production expansion into other labour-saving devices. Armstrong’s development of the Hydraulic Accumulator Tower in 1850 solved the problem of requiring a continuous water head, broadening the technology’s applications.
Alongside a fast-growing demand from the dockyards, Armstrong expanded the business and the works and within 12 months the company had doubled in size. Amongst the initial contracts were orders for hydraulic mining machinery for use in the lead mines of Northumberland and for a hydraulic engine to power the brand-new printing press at the Newcastle Daily Chronicle.
Orders and new requirements were arriving from all over the UK and before long Elswick products were being shipped all over the world. Armstrong’s talent for turning concept into reality became much sought after and although Elswick continued to manufacture hydraulic machinery, Armstrong decided that he also wanted to enter the field of armament production.
After reading reports on the heavy and inefficient field guns used in the Crimean War, he designed the innovative Armstrong Gun—a lighter, rifled, breech-loading gun firing explosive shells with improved accuracy and range. The War Office commissioned these guns, leading Elswick to manufacture a complete range of military ordnance. The development of new forging skills also enabled the firm to produce iron bridges, like the Inverness Bridge and India's Koilwar Bridge (Abdul Bari Bridge), which was pre-fabricated at Elswick.
Elswick expanded into producing dock hoists, swing bridges, lock gate engines, and mining equipment. By the early 1860s, the workforce had grown from 300 to over 3,800, producing more than 100 cranes annually.
Elswick Ordnance Company - 1859
In 1859, Armstrong separated his armaments interests into the Elswick Ordnance Company (EOC) to avoid conflicts with his role as Chief Engineer of Rifled Ordnance for the War Office. Unfortunately, the government abandoned all Armstrong designed guns during the mid-1860s due to ‘a dissatisfaction’ with Armstrong’s breech mechanism. Instead, they decided to build their own rifled muzzle-loaders at Woolwich Arsenal (Woolwich guns), a policy which obviously Armstrong strongly disagreed with. Despite rumours to the contrary, Armstrong held no financial interest in the Elswick Ordnance although many were not surprised when he left government service in 1864. Free of the constraints of government regulation, the Elswick Ordnance Company was consequently amalgamated with the main Armstrong businesses (Sir W.G. Armstrong & Company) although it retained its own trading name as the Armaments Manufacturing Division for many years to come.
With the loss of government work, Elswick Ordnance Company were forced to survive solely on export orders for both muzzle-loaders and breech-loaders. However, in the 1880s, the British government once again began purchasing Elswick-built guns. This time they ordered rifled breech-loaders with a much more robust interrupted screw-breech mechanism, such as that used in the French ‘de Bange system’ and its successors.
As the business flourished, the Elswick Works became one of the most important employers on Tyneside with William Armstrong taking his responsibilities as an employer very seriously. He developed and encouraged good quality housing for his workers, both close to the factories as well as throughout the areas to the north of Newcastle. He had amassed great wealth from his engineering success and became a major philanthropist to his native Newcastle. He strongly believed in education, founding the Literary and Mechanics Institute and creating a Lecture Hall at the Literary and Philosophical Society. Despite this, Armstrong faced worker unrest during the 1871 Nine-Hours Strike, reflecting tensions between industrial progress and labour rights. Armstrong, along with other business owners, presented a firm stance against the striking workers, but after fourteen weeks of strike action was forced to agree to his workers demand for a maximum nine-hour workday.
Around this period, a major milestone occurred with the replacement of Newcastle’s old Tyne Bridge with the world’s first swing bridge, engineered and powered by Armstrong’s hydraulic systems. Opened in 1876, it symbolised modern engineering, allowing larger ships access to the works. The Italian cargo ship Europa was the first vessel to pass through the new swing bridge on 17th July 1876 when collecting an enormous 100-ton gun which had been manufactured at Elswick, and as if to emphasise the worldwide spread of Armstrong technology, upon its arrival in Italy the gun was unloaded using an Elswick-built 180-ton hydraulic crane, the largest lifting machine of its type in the world at the time.
During the American Civil War, Elswick controversially supplied both Union and Confederate forces. In 1877, former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant toured Elswick to see its advanced gun production. Armstrong continued his local contributions by gifting Newcastle the landscaped Jesmond Dene Park and other recreational lands.
The arrival of Captain Andrew Noble at Elswick gave rise to the consideration of the further development of its artillery business beyond the simple manufacture of shell and bomb casings. Noble's knowledge of a new type of slow burning powder showed the way towards the introduction of ballistics and explosive products at Scotswood which proved successful when demonstrated to the government in April 1877. By now the company had gone public and as such it received a large financial boost which allowed it to open its own steel works in 1883 under Colonel Dyer, employing a work force of over 1,500 alone.
W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell and Co - 1882
A pivotal partnership formed when Armstrong merged with shipbuilder Charles Mitchell’s Low Walker yard in 1882, establishing W.G. Armstrong, Mitchell & Co. This integration allowed Elswick to produce complete warships—hulls, engines, guns, and systems—entirely in-house.
Under naval designer William White, and later Philip Watts, Elswick produced its first warship, the SMS Panther, a torpedo cruiser for the Austro-Hungarian Navy, in 1884. This was followed by ‘Gluckauf’, the world’s first ocean-going tanker, which was completed at Elswick in July 1886. It was designed by Henry F. Swan (Former Managing Director of the Walker Yards) to carry 3,500 tons of oil from America or the Black Sea to Europe.
Shipbuilding projects continued and in 1889, Elswick produced the Italian cruiser 'Piemonte', the first major warship armed entirely with quick-firing (QF) guns and said to be the fastest cruiser in the world at the time. They also completed work on ‘Polluce’ and ‘Castore’, a pair of twin-screw gunboats that were shipped in part-form to Italy before they were re-assembled in the Armstrong Pozzouli shipyard of Naples. Throughout the final decade of the 19th century, Elswick produced over 40 vessels, predominantly cruisers for South American customers. It is also noteworthy that during 1896 there were no fewer than 20 warships at Elswick in various stages of production.
In addition to the production of ships, guns and locomotives, the Elswick Yard became involved in many more unusual applications of its technology such as the supply of the hydraulic mechanism for the update of Tower Bridge in London.
During 1892, Armstrong made his last appearance at the Elswick Works (now employing about 13,000 people) during a VIP visit by the King of Siam.
Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd - 1897
In 1897, during a period of British naval and armaments expansion, Armstrong, Mitchell & Co Ltd purchased and amalgamated with the Manchester-based armaments concern of Sir Joseph Whitworth & Company to become Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd. William Armstrong and Joseph Whitworth had maintained a respectful friendship despite being arch-rivals in business and it was almost inevitable that the two great engineering concerns would eventually join together as one major organisation.
The Whitworth company had made its name through its founder and the invention of the British Standard Whitworth thread. Although Whitworth had died in 1887, his company had gained a degree of success in the armaments industry through the Whitworth Rifle, an extremely accurate single-shot muzzleloader. Whitworth had also been a competitor in the large rifled breech-loading gun market and owned several patents in the specialist field of barrel forging. The Whitworth Works at Openshaw, Manchester would provide a number of key skills and capabilities which worked well alongside those being developed and employed at Elswick.
William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong CB FRS passed away on 27th December 1900, at the venerable age of 90. Towards the end of his life he was an invalid and spent most of his time at Cragside, his small county estate to the north of the city. Being childless, Armstrong was succeeded by his nephew William Watson-Armstrong who took control of the company as well as his vast fortune. The company appointed Sir Andrew Noble as Chairman in 1901.
Such was the size of the endeavour at Elswick that the Ordnance Department alone now comprised of 93 buildings and workshops, containing some of the most advanced engineering machinery in the world. The department was busily creating all manner of guns, fuzes, shot and shell cases, mountings and gun carriages. 117 different 'shops' existed within the main works with a further 31 in the shipyard and another 18 in the Steel Works.
The Elswick Works turned out around 6,500 tons of guns, torpedo tubes, artillery and mountings per year. A 10-inch gun took about a year to make whilst the 100-ton gun took at least 18 months. The lathes, drills and milling machines of the Gun-building Department ranged from the most delicate to the largest ever made. Post-1900, Armstrong Whitworth diversified into automotive production and employed Walter Gordon Wilson, co-inventor of the tank. Wilson’s work at Elswick contributed to the Mark I tank prototype.
Warship production at Elswick continued at a pace although the constantly increasing size of capital ships meant that Elswick was still constrained by the Newcastle bridges. The Low Walker Yard also had its own size constraints and the increased length of naval ships was proving too long for the yard to handle. Therefore in 1910, the Board of Directors looked at creating a completely new yard downstream from Newcastle. A site close to the existing Low Walker Yard was chosen and initially known as the Armstrong Yard, before becoming the High Walker Yard. Nowadays, it is more often referred to as the Walker Naval Yard.
Meanwhile at Elswick, all the buildings on the site had been connected by railway lines and overhead cranes, each served by huge coal and gas-fired boilers and engines. By that time there were three large blast furnaces at Elswick, eight steel furnaces and a huge brass foundry. The Steel Works covered 12 acres alone, producing 1,500 tons of steel a week. Built on a series of terraces covering an area of around 50,000 square yards, raw materials were passed directly into the furnaces from the rail carriages arriving on the highest level. From there the steel ingots of around 96-tons would be transferred by crane to the forges before one of the four 5,000-ton hydraulic presses turned them into hoops for shipbuilding or barrels for ordnance.
With war looming, in 1913 Armstrong-Whitworth created an ‘Arial Department’ at Dukes Moor, Gosforth towards the north of the city, and it became the Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft subsidiary in 1920. During the First World War, Armstrong-Whitworth became the largest munitions producer in the world with one-in-four of the local working population earning their living at the Elswick warren of factories.
A total of 47 warships were built at Elswick for the Royal Navy during the war years, as well as 22 merchant and cargo vessels. In addition, they 'Armed' a further 62 warships and 236 other vessels. The overall wartime production was a staggering 1,000+ torpedo tubes, 1,075 aeroplanes and three airships. There was also the new weapon on the horizon - the tank.
Developed in Great Britain in the early part of the war, the tank first appeared on the battlefield in 1916. The manufacture of tanks at Elswick commenced during 1917 with the production of 102 Mark IV Heavy Tank and it accounted for a major proportion of all tanks used in action during the First World War. Initially used in very small numbers, they gave somewhat disappointing results. When correctly employed however, such as during the infamous Battle of Cambrai, significant advances were immediately achieved.
The various works of Sir W.G. Armstrong Whitworth were responsible for a huge output of military products during the war, including over 13,000 guns of up to 18-inch calibre, 14.5 million shell cases, over 21 million cartridges and over 18 million fuzes.
Manual workers received just one weekend off a month but despite the physical demands, people from all over the northeast (particularly women and young girls) applied for jobs at the Works, contributing to the country’s overall war effort. By the end of the war, Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd employed 78,000 people - 60,000 of them on Tyneside.
The ending of hostilities saw a dramatic fall in orders, and the company made a concerted effort to enter the railway market, with contracts obtained for the construction and supply of steam and diesel locomotives to numerous railway systems throughout Britain, India, Belgium, Columbia, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and Ceylon. Between 1919 and 1936, the company created more than 1,250 locomotives, predominantly completed at Scotswood.
A shower of orders at the end of the war brought a degree of prosperity to the shipbuilding industry in the northern England although this was to be short lived. Within just a few short years the Great Depression struck and yards were being closed all over the region. This signalled the end of Elswick’s involvement in shipbuilding and in 1920 all production was directed to the Naval Yard at Walker. Elswick was simply treading water although much, much worse was to come. A disastrous investment decision in a Newfoundland Power & Paper making facility in 1925 nearly brought down the whole of Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd. After all the success and fortune, it was only saved by a ‘shotgun’ merger with Vickers of Barrow, which was completed in 1927.
Vickers-Armstrongs - 1927
This new entity, Vickers-Armstrongs, now possessed a major shipyard on each coast of Britain and it was easily one of the most important warship manufacturers in the world. An engineering giant, at the end of the war it had divisions all over the country. In Newcastle, the Armstrong-Whitworth Scotswood Works had been excluded from the merger, as was the Armstrong-Whitworth Aircraft Division who both charted their own course thereafter.
By the early thirties, production at Elswick had shrunk drastically and it was only being sustained by the company’s export efforts. This included production of the Mk II Light Tank, for use by the British Army in India, together with limited production of the Vickers 6-ton light tank for Bolivia.
At the Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1932, there were serious proposals to do away with the tank altogether. However, rearmament efforts under Hitler spurred the British government to undertake a full review of the country’s armed strength, followed by a recommendation for increasing it, but it was not until Hitler’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland that Vickers-Armstrongs received the order to begin an urgent re-armament program.
Notable production during this re-armament period included the building of the King George V Class, 14-inch gun battleships with the first in class (HMS King George V) being launched at High Walker in 1939. Vickers-Armstrongs was heavily involved in the main armament of all the vessels of the class.
There were also less glamorous but equally important tasks in which Elswick played key roles. These included ‘bit-work’ to do with the construction of submarines, cruisers and destroyers for the Royal Navy. They also carried out work for other associated companies by producing components and propellers for the Vickers Wellesley, Vildebeest and Vincent aircraft for the RAF, as well as the design and build of crucial parts for a wide range of ancillary equipment such as armour plating for defence use, fire control systems, range-finders and clockwork fuzes.
Second World War
In the early part of Second World War, Elswick’s ability to change from peacetime to wartime production was vitally important and its overall production rates were above all expectations.In addition to its armaments, the Elswick Works is still best known for its land vehicles and tanks and much of the equipment utilised by the British Army at the start of the conflict was produced by Vickers. The Ministry of Defence automatic infantry weapons of choice were the Vickers K and Lewis machine guns, with the main tank (MTB) being the Vickers Medium Tank, developed in the early-twenties and destined to serve until 1941.
Other military products included the Vickers Light Tank, the two early Cruisers and the Matilda I, the first true Infantry Tank and possibly one of the company's most important designs. The Matilda was produced in the thousands during the Second World War and over 18,500 people were employed on war-work, spread between Elswick and Scotswood. By 1940, Vickers-Armstrong were producing a range of seven different tracked armoured vehicles comprising of the Light Tank Mk VI / Mk VII (Tetrarch), Cruiser Tanks Mk I (A9) / Mk II (A10), the Infantry Tank Mk I (Matilda I) / Mk III (Valentine) and the Vickers Machine-Gun Carrier.
The Vickers Valentine Infantry Tank, its name derived from the company’s telegraphic address (Vickers Armstrongs Limited Newcastle upon Tyne), was the most successful British fighting vehicle of the war. During the conflict over 8,000 were produced including some that were manufactured in Canada and then shipped to Europe and Africa. More than 1,000 Vickers Valentine tanks were also sent to Russia.
The wartime naval production at Vickers-Armstrongs yards during the war was to total some 225 naval vessels, including eight aircraft carriers, five cruisers, one battleship, one monitor ship, 36 destroyers, 123 submarines and 51 assault craft and was heralded as a main contributor to the eventual Allied victory.
Post War - 1946
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Vickers-Armstrongs was appointed as ‘Design Parent’ for the primary British Army Main Battle Tank (MBT), the Centurion, between 1946 and 1959. Arriving in production just too late to see active war service, the Centurion was to become the world’s first Main Battle Tank, able to fulfill all the roles of the previous types plus the capability of constant upgrading in order to meet developing threats.
Whilst the majority were built by Leyland Motors in Lancashire and at the Royal Ordnance Factories (ROF) Leeds, the Elswick Works played their part in the production of this versatile platform. Between 1944 -1960, they produced 1,437 main battle tanks and 345 Armoured Recovery Vehicles.
Shortly after Centurion production began, the UK government re-ignited its interest in the concept of a ‘Universal Tank’ which was designated FV200. Design work was initiated by the Department of Tank Design at Elswick, with English Electric being appointed as the prime contractor. Initially, there were ambitious plans for an extensive range of 22 different variants, all within the ‘Universal’ tank family concept. However, only a few variants were produced and used in active service. Vickers then manufactured the Conqueror, Caernarvon and ARV prototype vehicles at Elswick whilst the series production of the Gun Tanks was eventually undertaken by the Royal Ordnance Factories. Elswick did however manufacture a number of Armoured Recovery Vehicles with eight ARV Mk Is (FV219) and 20 Mk IIs (FV222) being built at the Works.
Whilst Vickers were concentrating on development of the Vickers Mk 1 during the late 1950s, other competitors had begun their own tank development activity and in 1959 this resulted in the War Office issuing a requirement for a new MBT to replace the Centurion. The result was the Chieftain, a formidable advanced tank design and although Leyland Motors was appointed as the main design contractor, Vickers-Armstrongs and Elswick were responsible for producing 400 turrets and weapon systems. In an agreement (similar to that reached over Centurion), Elswick also produced every ARV and ARRV in the range (257 vehicles).
The FV433 Abbot 105mm Self Propelled Gun (SPG) was part of the FV430 series of vehicles that were also designed in the late 1950s. Elswick was designated as the ‘Design Parent’ once more and they manufactured the first of 12 prototypes during 1961. Following a series of development trials, a production order was placed for the British Army. This resulted in Elswick Works manufacturing another 146 Abbot SPG vehicles between 1964 and 1967, many of which remained in-service with the Royal Artillery until the early 1990s.
Vickers also produced a special version of the Abbot SPG and built 68 ‘value-engineered’ Abbots which were supplied to India. In addition, an agreement with India was also signed during 1961 to co-develop a new tank and establish a production facility. The requirement was for a Main Battle Tank and the first prototype, designated Vickers Mk1 MBT, was produced and sent to India for assessment in 1964. It proved to be a light, highly mobile and (when combined with the 105mm L7 gun) very capable tank, named ‘Vijayanta’ (meaning victorious or conqueror). Vijayanta entered service in 1965 and by the time production ceased in India in 1983, around 2,000 had been built. Elswick also won an additional order for 70 Vickers Mk.1 MBTs for Kuwait with deliveries between 1970 and 1972.
Vickers - 1968
Post war employment at Elswick had steadily declined, predominantly due to reductions in defence spending and the introduction of automated machinery and computer-controlled technology. Two events in the 1960s and 1970s in particular were to have significant effects on the Vickers Group of Companies – the nationalisation of the Steel industry in 1967 followed by the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act in 1977, the latter significantly reducing the size of the Vickers-Armstrongs businesses overnight.
From 1977 onwards, the remaining elements of the Vickers-Armstrongs (Engineers) Ltd was largely based in Newcastle and continued to be heavily dependent upon tank orders. At the same time, the Vickers group expanded commercial operations, including medical, printing and automotive sectors. The Armstrong name was no longer used and following the acquisition of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in 1980, a new corporate Vickers ‘V’ logo was introduced.
The ‘make or buy’ policy at Elswick tended to be biased towards whether something could be made on site, rather than a simple cost comparison, to maximise the retention of specialist knowledge and overhead recoveries wherever possible. A decision made to concentrate on the defence market combined with a lack of future orders resulted in the closure of the Iron Foundry and the Non-Ferrous Metal Division in 1980. The remaining interests at Elswick including military vehicle manufacture, were divested as the public company Vickers Plc.
The sheer size, scale and age of the Elswick site was by now becoming a hindrance to the company, with many of the twenty-seven workshops showing signs of their Victorian heritage. The heating bill alone amounted to more than £1,000,000 per year, while still proving virtually ineffective during the winter months.
As a result of all of this, the decision was taken to undertake a full redevelopment of the factory sites. The Scotswood Works closed in 1979, followed shortly afterwards by the Elswick Works. The buildings on the Scotswood site were demolished and a new factory opened in 1982 as the Armstrong Works, albeit under different ownership and use. The site of the Elswick Works was fully redeveloped as the Newcastle Business Park adjacent to Water Street. While little visual signs remain of the original Elswick works, Armstrong’s pioneering legacy endures in Newcastle’s industrial history, and in the continuing story of BAE Systems.