Armstrong's wooded estate — the first house lit by hydro.
Open to visitorsa National Trust place — check opening times and admission before you go
Cragside, above Rothbury, was the first house in the world lit by hydroelectric power — Lord Armstrong, the Tyneside arms and engineering magnate, wired it up in the 1870s using a dynamo driven by water from one of the lakes he dammed on the estate. The architect Norman Shaw turned his shooting lodge into a great Victorian mansion clinging to the crag. The grounds are the other half of a day here: a huge rock garden, lakeside drives and millions of planted trees, glorious once the rhododendrons are out. National Trust, seasonal.
