Lord of the crags

There is a corner of Northumberland, in the valley of the River Coquet, where the climate has been changed for ever by the actions of one man. In the mid-1860s, William Armstrong set out to transform vast tracts of raw, bleak moorland into what he described as ‘an earthly paradise’ and by the time of his death in 1900, at the age of 90, he had planted over seven million trees and shrubs on an estate of more than 1,700 acres.

Armstrong’s intention had been to recreate a rugged Himalayan landscape of rocks and streams and cascades — a damp valley environment that, as it happened, was well suited to conifers. The species he planted included Douglas fir, Caucasian fir, Low’s fir and Western Hemlock; they would have been quite unfamiliar to most of his countrymen at the time. Some have since reached such a great height that they are described as champion trees; Cragside has England’s tallest Douglas fir, which is more than 58 metres high.