Armstrong's architect for Cragside's expansion was the Scot R. Norman Shaw. Shaw had begun his career in the office of William Burn and had later studied under Anthony Salvin and George Edmund Street. Salvin had taught him the mastery of internal planning which was essential for the design of the large and highly variegated houses which the Victorian wealthy craved. Salvin and Street had taught him to understand the Gothic Revival. At only 24, he won the RIBA Gold Medal and Travelling Studentship. The connection between Armstrong and Shaw was made when Armstrong purchased a picture, "Prince Hal taking the crown from his father's bedside" by John Callcott Horsley, which proved too large to fit into his town house in Jesmond, Newcastle. Horsley was a friend of both, and recommended that Shaw design an extension to the banqueting hall Armstrong had previously built in the grounds. When this was completed in 1869, Shaw was asked for enlargements and improvements to the shooting lodge Armstrong had had built at Rothbury four years earlier. This was the genesis of the transformation of the house between 1869 and 1884. Over the next thirty years, Cragside became the centre of Armstrong's world; reminiscing years later, in his old age, he remarked, "had there been no Cragside, I shouldn't be talking to you todayfor it has been my very life".