News Briefing
Work on The Armstrong Project got under way in spring 2025, when a large volunteer group spent a weekend clearing a huge amount of vegetation from around Jesmond Dene Banqueting Hall, under the guidance of project trustees Peter Jamieson and Maxine Webster. The aim was to prepare the way for building surveys and assessment of any urgent repairs. Read David Whetstone’s account in Cultured.North East.
We are delighted to announce that the Architectural Heritage Fund has now provided a grant for some initial survey work.
A second working party will take place during the weekend of 25–26 October, details to follow. If you’d like to take part, message us here – and please share your ideas for a new-look Banqueting Hall. Public meetings will be held as the project progresses.
Among many exciting proposals is the transformation of the Norman Shaw Lodge into a visitor centre, where adults and children can learn about the history and heritage of the area and the amazing achievements of the giants of science and industry who epitomised the glory of Tyneside in the 19th century.
The Dobson Hall on the riverbank will be a place accessible to everyone for public events and entertainment, while other parts of the building will include classrooms and studios for training and practice of all sorts of skills, combining arts and engineering.
Architectural Heritage Fund backs Armstrong Project
Two images of the Banqueting Hall – as it appears today, and as it appeared in the 1880s, when it was gifted to the people of Newcastle.
In 2025 the Lit & Phil – the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne – celebrates 200 years in its elegant neoclassical building on Westgate Road with an array of talks, concerts and other events.
One of its two longest-serving presidents was Sir William Armstrong – Lord Armstrong, as he became in 1887 – who sat in the presidential chair from 1860 until his death in 1900. (The other was Sir John Swinburne, who served from 1798 to 1838.) Other past presidents included Robert Stephenson, Charles Parsons and Joseph Swan.
The society was founded in 1793, at the time of the French Revolution, and was regarded by some as a subversive organisation. One of its earliest members was William Armstrong senior, Lord Armstrong’s father, who had recently arrived in Newcastle from the village of Wreay, near Carlisle, where his own father worked as a shoemaker. It moved into its current building in 1825.
On 21 July 2025, in an event to mark the bicentenary, Henrietta Heald gave a lecture in the society’s famous library, the largest independent library outside London, on ‘The Armstrongs and the Lit & Phil: a Century of Progress’.
A glorious bicentenary
The building of the Literary & Philosophical Society in Westgate Road, Newcastle, opened in 1825. William Armstrong, seen here in his characteristic ‘brainwave’ pose, was president of the society for 40 years, from 1860 to 1900.
One of five casts of the Elgin Marbles adorning the Lit & Phil’s entrance hall.
Steam to Green: North East England’s energy revolution
The Steam to Green exhibition at Discovery Museum explores the story of energy in the North East by looking back to the industrial revolution – and by looking forward to the developments in green technologies now being pioneered across the North East region.
Discovery is Newcastle’s museum of science and industry, a wonderful repository of Tyneside’s proud history of invention and innovation, especially during the 19th century. The region was the birthplace not only of the railways but also of the steam turbine – developed by Charles Parsons – which revolutionised marine propulsion and made possible the generation of electricity on a vast scale.
The museum includes examples of William Armstrong’s advances in hydraulics and hydroelectricity, as well as an Armstrong Whitworth car dating from 1911.
Steam to Green features exciting hands-on displays of wind and solar power, historical science and engineering objects and even a ‘cutaway’ electric NISSAN Leaf car – all designed to showcase how the North East is leading the way in green technology.
Newcastle University is the exhibition partner, with Vattenfall as headline sponsor, and supporters including Reece Foundation, Headley Trust and The Art Fund.
An Armstrong Whitworth car dating from 1911 is a prize exhibit in the Tyneside Challenge gallery of Discovery Museum. A later model produced by a successor firm was the hugely popular Armstrong Siddeley.
Don’t miss Discovery Nights – Going Underground
Book tickets now for an adults-only event inspired by the mining heritage of North East England at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum on 10 October 2025.
From poetry readings to ghost stories, the evening’s array of gripping entertainments includes ‘Bright Sparks: the Tyneside men who lit up the world’, a series of ‘electric tales’ told by Henrietta Heald about William Armstrong and Charles Parsons.
The Armstrong Mitchell crane in the Venice Arsenale is the only surviving example of eight giant cranes built around the world in the 1880s by the Tyneside company for the loading and unloading of warships. A similar crane once stood at La Spezia, on Italy’s northwest coast.
As Henrietta Heald explained at a recent gathering of the Circolo Italo-Britannico in Venice, the crane is an important relic of the thriving industrial relationship that existed in the 19th century between Italy and Britain, cemented in the 1860s, at the time of Italian unification.
William Armstrong and his colleague James Meadows Rendel both visited Italy to advise on the construction and use of hydraulic machinery in naval dockyards, and Armstrong later built ships on the Tyne for the new Italian navy. A branch of the Armstrong firm was established at Posillipo on the Bay of Naples and managed by James Rendel’s son George.
The Arsenale crane was adopted as a restoration project by the British charity Venice in Peril, which reinforced the ballast box to stabilise it, and paid for research and analysis which led to a full-scale restoration programme drawn up by the Venice Soprintendenza.
A monument to British engineering in Venice
The work to restore the Armstrong Mitchell crane in the Venice Arsenale is currently being undertaken by the Biennale organisation, using European funds designated by Rome. For centuries, the Arsenale was a mighty naval base.