Cragend Silo - Izeria

Cragend Silo is a Grade II* listed building located at Cragend Farm near the town of Rothbury in Northumberland, England. It was designed and built by Lord Armstrong of Cragside.

1. History

William Armstrong (26 November 1810 – 27 December 1900) was an industrialist and inventor who founded the firm of Armstrong Whitworth and developed the business into one of the world's foremost armaments manufacturers. Having spent much of his childhood in Rothbury, in 1862 he returned on a walking holiday, purchased a small parcel of land and built a modest shooting box. Over the next forty years, he enlarged both the house and the estate, making the property one of the most technologically advanced of its time. Armstrong was "especially interested in water power" and expended considerable effort to extending the application of hydraulic power from the industrial into the agricultural and domestic spheres. His home Cragside was the first in the world to be lit by hydroelectric power and the sawmill he designed and built at Debdon, where he combined a turbine with a Siemens horizontal generator was the first development of a hydroelectric power source. The conservators Sarah Schmitz and Caroline Rawson suggest Cragside was "the place where modern living began". Expanding his landholdings around Cragside, Lord Armstrong acquired Cragend, a nearby 16th-century farmhouse two miles south of Rothbury. He started work on modernising the farm in the 1880s, and around 1895 built the experimental hydraulic silo building now known as Cragend Silo. The design is believed to have been influenced by a French system that Armstrong studied, and was intended to improve the efficiency of processing cut grass into silage. Despite the innovative design, the procedure required a great deal of manual labour: this, coupled with issues caused by fumes emanating from the fermenting grass, led to the silo's abandonment after a short period of operation. Blackburn Lake, which provided hydraulic power for the machinery, was drained around 1930. Cragend Silo was designated a Grade II* listed building on 25 August 1987.

1. Description

The building is constructed of snecked stone, with tooled-and-margined dressings. The central block has a Welsh slate roof, and the two rectangular silage bays are roofed with curved corrugated iron. These each contain eighteen large stone drums, and flank the taller cross-gabled centre, which still contains the hydraulic engine, manufactured by Gilkes & Co, in the basement, and a turbine at ground level. A chopping machine, now removed, was originally housed on the first floor and powered by the turbine below. Grass was fed into the first-floor chopping machine before being loaded by hand into the silos below, where it was compressed by the weight of the stone drums. Hydraulic power was used to lift the drums, and for hoists to lift compressed grass, and workers, out of the silos.

1. Restoration

The building is currently (2019) undergoing restoration work, funded by the Historic Houses Foundation, to make it accessible, including the repair of interior stairs and flooring.

1. References


1. Sources

Greeves, Lydia (2008). Houses of the National Trust. London, UK: National Trust Books. ISBN 9-7819054-0066-9. Heald, Henrietta (2012). William Armstrong: Magician of the North. Carmarthen, UK: McNidder & Grace. ISBN 9-780857-16042-3. Pevsner, Nikolaus; Richmond, Ian (2002). Northumberland. The Buildings Of England. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09638-5. Saint, Andrew (2010). Richard Norman Shaw. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9-780300-15526-6.

1. Further reading

Renwick, Lou (2024). Transformation: Lord Armstrong's Cragend Farm. ISBN 978-1-835-97207-6

Nearby Places View Menu

Brinkburn railway station

Brinkburn was a weatherboard- and corrugated-iron-built railway station in Northumberland on the Rothbury Branch built to serve the Healy Coate Colliery to which it was linked by a two-mile aerial ropeway.

Landmark Train

Cragside

Cragside is a Tudor Revival country house near the town of Rothbury in Northumberland, England. Dating to the Victorian era, it was the home of William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, founder of the Armstrong Whitworth armaments firm. An industrial magnate, scientist, philanthropist and inventor of the hydraulic crane and the Armstrong gun, Armstrong also displayed his inventiveness in the domestic sphere, making Cragside the first house in the world to be lit using hydroelectric power. The estate was technologically advanced: the architect of the house, Richard Norman Shaw, wrote that it was equipped with "wonderful hydraulic machines that do all sorts of things". In the grounds, Armstrong built dams and lakes to power a sawmill, a water-powered laundry, early versions of a dishwasher and a dumb waiter, a hydraulic lift and a hydroelectric rotisserie. In 1887, Armstrong was raised to the peerage, the first engineer or scientist to be ennobled, and became Baron Armstrong of Cragside. The original building consisted of a small shooting lodge which Armstrong built between 1862 and 1864. In 1869, he employed the architect Richard Norman Shaw to enlarge the site, and in two phases of work between 1869 and 1882, they transformed the house into a northern Neuschwanstein. The result was described by the architect and writer Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel as "one of the most dramatic compositions in all architecture". Armstrong filled the house with a significant art collection; he and his wife were patrons of many 19th-century British artists. Cragside became an integral part of Armstrong's commercial operations: honoured guests under Armstrong's roof, including the Shah of Persia, the King of Siam and two future Prime Ministers of Japan, were also customers for his commercial undertakings. Following Armstrong's death in 1900, his heirs struggled to maintain the house and estate. In 1910, the best of Armstrong's art collection was sold off, and by the 1970s, in an attempt to meet inheritance tax, plans were submitted for large-scale residential development of the estate. In 1971 the National Trust asked the architectural historian Mark Girouard to compile a gazetteer of the most important Victorian houses in Britain which the Trust should seek to save should they ever be sold. Girouard placed Cragside at the top of the list; in 1977, the house was acquired by the Trust with the aid of a grant from the National Land Fund. A Grade I listed building since 1953, Cragside has been open to the public since 1979.

Historic Site Landmark

1.9 km

Thrum Mill, Rothbury

The Thrum Mill is a grade II-listed water mill in Rothbury, Northumberland, England. The water mill dates back to 1665.

Historic Site Landmark

Rothbury railway station

Rothbury was a railway station in Northumberland, England at the end of the single-track Rothbury Branch that served the town of Rothbury. Rothbury was the terminus of the line with a turntable at the end of the track.

Landmark Train