Hydraulic Silo Building 70 Metres East Of Cragend Farmhouse

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…

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…