Charles Spearman Armstrong

Charles Spearman Armstrong (1847–1924) was an Irish-born pioneer of tea and cinchona in British Ceylon, where he arrived in 1863.

He was the author of Tea Cultivation in Ceylon (1884).

Life Armstrong was born in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland.

In 1863, at the age of sixteen, Armstrong sailed to Ceylon, at a time when planters there were abandoning their plantations, due to a collapse in coffee. By 1864, he had gained possession of a former coffee estate called Rookwood at Hewaheta. This lies on a high plateau, some thirty miles from Kandy and fifteen miles from Nuwara Eliya. Travelling there by horse, Armstrong found an estate of moribund coffee trees and a log cabin. With some other young men, he rode to Talaimannar and rowed across the Palk Strait to India. They came back with sacks of tea seed, and Armstrong planted 750 acres of tea at Rookwood. He also planted cinchona trees. In 1875, he married Angelina, who had been born in Colombo, and they had five children. From 1880 to 1884 he was the owner of an estate called Amunamulla.

In 1884, Armstrong published a book, Tea Cultivation in Ceylon. In 1891, he was a member of the Standing Committee of the Ceylon Tea Fund.

Retirement In 1908, Armstrong retired to England and was succeeded at Rookwood by his son, John Spearman Armstrong, who managed the plantation until 1944. Armstrong died in 1924.

Armstrong's grandson, Neville Armstrong, who had been born at Rookwood in 1913, had clear memories of his grandfather in 1997. He described him as "an introverted man who said very little. There were no arguments, no wise sayings, no advice given. It was a very strict Victorian family." Physically, he remembered "piercing blue eyes and a large white spade beard".