Posted on 10/13/2013 9:43:51 PM PDT by robowombat
Tyneside was once the workshop of the world, but a remarkable piece of industrial history, which can be tracked back to the first Lord Armstrong, is about to come to an end.
The first Lord Armstrong developed a business that was arguably the world’s first global defence company.
By Roland Gribben6:05PM BST 17 Jun 2012
The pubs have long gone. So have the rows of terraced houses that stretched up the hillside and housed the workers. Now the last of the munitions factories and warship construction yards that hugged the banks of the Tyne from Scotswood Bridge for almost a mile into the heart of Newcastle is to shut next year, ending a remarkable piece of industrial history. The closure of the armoured vehicle plant, now part of BAE Systems, leaves the Scotswood Road without a weapon of mass destruction. For more than 100 years the factories perched on a narrow strip of land between Scotswood Road and the river at Elswick helped arm the world, made Tyneside a powerful engineering workshop and gave William Armstrong (1810-1900) a unique place among the generation of industrialists and philanthropists who made Britain the workshop of the world. The first Lord Armstrong developed a business that was arguably the world’s first global defence company. He left the law to build cranes, branched into bridge building then moved into armaments.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
“There’s no England, now.”
Not to worry; the Chinese make pretty good guns too! /s
He agreed with me.
I suppose the English will fight their next war with spitballs.
Are there any photographs from the “old days”?
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