20/05/2010

Charity Aims to Preserve Lord Armstrong Hydraulic Crane

Tony Henderson , The Journal

ITALIAN heritage experts were given a crash course yesterday on the life and times of one of the North East's greatest sons.

The inventor and industrial tycoon William, later Lord Armstrong, patented the hydraulic crane in 1846.

What could be the last surviving example of one of his giant cranes is at the Arsenale in Venice, a former Italian navy base.

The British charity Venice in Peril is championing the saving and restoration of the crane, which is likely to cost two million euros.

But while the great art and architecture treasures of Venice take top priority for the Italians, the idea of the restoration of 19th Century industrial monuments and machinery is not so developed.

So Venice in Peril arranged for the Italian visit to the North East yesterday to demonstrate how we have preserved and restored much of our 19th Century heritage and to showcase the achievements of Lord Armstrong, with this year being the 200th anniversary of his birth in Newcastle.

Alberto Lionello, engineering director of the Superintendency for Architectural Heritage and Landscape of Venice and his colleague, architectural director Claudio Menichelli, visited Lord Armstrong's Cragside home in Northumberland, now run by the National Trust.

The later took in Armstrong's hydraulically-operated Swing Bridge on the Tyne and then called at Newcastle Archives in the Discovery Museum to see the original drawings for the crane.

Their visit was rounded off by a reception at Newcastle Civic Centre. Among the party accompanying the Italians was Sir Neil Cossons, former chairman of English Heritage and Henrietta Heald, who has been working for the last three years on a definitive biography of Lord Armstrong, due out in September.

Sir Neil said: "They have come to worship at the shrine of Lord Armstrong.

"They fully understand the importance of the Venice crane but I think they have been overwhelmed at the extent to which we in this country value our 19th Century heritage and its restoration and they have come here to see how we do it."

Sir Neil said that while Venice had centuries of heritage behind it, the 19th Century was when Britain dominated the world, with the industrial might of the North East playing a key role.

"Britain was an imperial, mercantile and industrial powerhouse and The Tyne and the Wear were the Venice of the North," he said.

Nicky Baly, Venice in Peril development director, said: " The crane is very special as the last surviving example of its type. It is hugely important.

"While Venice has such great heritage there isn't a history in Italy of industrial archaeology or restoration and the British are ahead of the game in this respect."
 
Robin Wright, engineering warden at Cragside, said : "The Venice crane has been recognised as a very important piece of industrial archaeology. Given its connection with Armstrong, it was only natural that the people from Venice were interested in visiting Cragside. At the National Trust we are passionate about preserving the past for the future, but interpreting it in a modern way. At Cragside, we have installed a modern hydraulic crane that visitors can use to lift a car with one hand."
 
Crane history
 
The crane was commissioned in 1883 by the Italian navy from the Newcastle works of Armstrong Mitchell.
 
Cranes, produced by the factory from 1877, were the high point of 19th Century technology in the field of hoisting machinery. The idea of constructing a heavy-duty crane in the Venice Arsenale was first proposed in 1881 by the shipbuilders working on the battleship Morosini in order to hoist four 160-ton Armstrong guns on to the vessel.
 
The crane was finally decommissioned in the mid-1950s. More than 120 years have passed since the crane was erected and it is suffering from a serious structural problem. The crane's counterweight chamber is cracking and if that were to give way, the crane would collapse.
 
The Italian visitors also learned of the historic links between their country and the Tyne.
 
The Swing Bridge occupies virtually the same site as the bridge built across the Tyne in 120 AD by the Roman emperor Hadrian. The first ship to pass the bridge, on July 17 1876, was the Italian ship Europa.
 
The antiquary John Collingwood Bruce wrote: "In the Second Century, Rome exhibited on the banks of the Tyne the triumphs of her engineering skill. In the 19th Century the chieftains of Tyneside showed Rome how largely Britain had profited by her instruction."