These contacts were to help him gain a commercial foothold when he moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, joining a Losh-owned corn firm.

He was born in 1778, in the small village of Wreay, Cumbria, the son of a local shoemaker,[1] and descended from a long line of yeomen.

George Losh was here, a senior partner in the firm, alongside the naturalised German merchant, John Diedrich Lubbren.

This argument did not meet with agreement on the committee, and the following year, it recommended the construction of the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway, headed by the more radical reformer, James Losh.

After the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which reformed the governance of local boroughs, Armstrong was elected as a reformist candidate in the Newcastle town council, an office he attained with a substantial majority against the reactionary Matthew Anderson.

His success didn't sustain in the following, 1839 election, where he was defeated by a landslide by the "more formidable opponent", George Palmer, losing his seat 38 votes to 8.

The aldermen were not so harmonious when, a few months later, he was proposed to be made the mayor of Newcastle, as the queen was expected to visit the town soon.

[1][9][10] Armstrong was generally a progressive, but began as a more independent, and sometimes reactionary, politician, remaining a "timid reformer" even afterwards, according to Welford.

[11] One political concern he held fast, in spite of his reformist reputation, was that against the abolition of the Corn Laws - a set of taxes on imported food, which kept domestic grain prices high.

Despite the many heated debates Armstrong presided over, "neither he nor the council's appointed engineer had the skills needed to enable a programme of improvement to be pursued with any degree of confidence", according to Stafford M. Linsley, writing for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Armstrong held out, continuing his demands for reform, which would invariably meet with the formidable opposition of the council until the River Tyne Improvement Act 1850 (13 & 14 Vict.

[6] The family initially lived in a three-storey terraced house on 9 Pleasant Row, Shieldfield, where his son, William was born, and spent his early childhood, developing a passion for water and fishing.

[14][15] His financial success in the corn industry allowed Armstrong to pursue several personal interests, including a passion for mathematics.

"Their tastes were similar; their political views harmonized; their aims were practically identical, and they became as brothers" according to local historian, Alfred Cochrane.