Armstrongs of Elswick

The factory specializing on hydraulic cranes, the engineers, armament makers and naval shipbuilders was set up in 1847 by William Armstrong at Elswick, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. It had become, before 1900, the ordanance, armour, naval and merchant shipbuilding and commercial engineering giant, Armstrong Whitworth. Armstrongs was prominent in the half dozen world-ranking armament concerns. After the extensions and exertions of the Great War, it was faced with collapse. It then became one of the earliest subjects for Bank of England involvement in industrial reconstruction. This book analyzes Armstrong's 80 years rise, decline and reorganization, treating it, in some ways, as a case study of British industrial malaise. The author has had access to Armstrong papers and minute books at Tyne and Wear Archives and Vickers Ltd, material in the University of Glasgow's Business Archives, and the extensive files of the Securities Management Trust in the Bank of England.