Cragside is a country house in the civil parish of Cartington in Northumberland, England. It was the first house in the world to be lit using hydroelectric power. Built into a rocky hillside above a 4 km² forest garden, it was the country home of Lord Armstrong and has been in the care of the National Trust since 1977.
Cragside, named after Cragend Hill above the house, was
built in 1863 as a modest two-storey country lodge, but was subsequently
extended to designs by Richard Norman Shaw, transforming it into an elaborate
mansion in the Free Tudor style. At one point, the building included an
astronomical observatory and a scientific laboratory.
Electricity
The generators, which also provided power for the farm
buildings on the estate, were constantly extended and improved to match the
increasing electrical demand in the house.
The Grade I listed[1] house is surrounded by one of Europe's
largest rock gardens, a large number of rhododendrons and a large collection of
mostly coniferous trees.
The documentary series Abroad Again in Britain by Jonathan
Meades focused on Cragside in episode 2 (2005).
In 2007, Cragside reopened after undergoing "total
refurbishment."
Cragside was featured during the 21 August 2011 episode of
BBC One's Britain's Hidden Heritage programme.
The Observer, Sunday 1 April 2007 / Restored: the world's first hydroelectric house
William Armstrong had his most brilliant ideas while
standing thigh-deep in water. The maverick Victorian inventor, who created the
mechanisms that raise Tower Bridge in London and open Newcastle's Swing Bridge,
was also a passionate fisherman and came up with the idea of hydraulic power at
the age of 24 while trout fishing in the Dee in Dentdale.
This weekend, the largest monument to Armstrong's ingenuity
is open to the public again after total refurbishment. Cragside, in
Northumberland, was home to Armstrong for 30 years and was the first house in
the world to be fitted with hydroelectricity. The incredible gadgets, from the
rotating spit in the kitchen to the hydraulic lift, were all powered by a vast
water pressure system housed in the basement.
Dubbed the 'palace of a modern magician' by one contemporary
visitor, it boasted an early dishwasher, a Turkish bath and hot and cold
running water. In completely refitting and rewiring the house for the first
time, The National Trust had to commission 500 carbon-filament lamps.
In later life Armstrong described his moment of illumination
that day in the river: 'I was lounging idly about, watching an old water-mill,
when it occurred to me what a small part of the power of the water was used in
driving the wheel, and then I thought how great would be the force of even a
small quantity of water if its energy were only concentrated in one column.'
Armstrong became one of the richest men in Europe by
inventing and manufacturing the Armstrong gun, a cannon. The son of a corn
merchant from Newcastle upon Tyne, he founded one of the world's leading
engineering firms, WG Armstrong, which sold hydraulic cranes around the world.
He employed more than 20,000 men at his works on the Tyne. In 1869 he expanded
the house he had built six years earlier on a country estate in Rothbury. The
architect Richard Norman Shaw built Cragside by transforming a modest sporting
lodge and Armstrong installed a hydroelectric generator in 1878, having dammed
a nearby river to create a lake. He wanted to create a cutting-edge home to
show important guests, including the King of Siam, the Shah of Persia, an
Afghan prince, and the future King Edward VII and his wife Alexandra.
Armstrong eventually presented the patents for his guns to
the British government and was knighted in gratitude in 1859. Then in 1887,
Queen Victoria's jubilee year, he became the first engineer to be raised to the
peerage, as Baron Armstrong of Cragside. The founder of Newcastle University,
he died at Cragside at the age of 90
in 1900.
· Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland
(www.nationaltrust.org.uk))
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