The Penshaw Monument (officially the Earl of Durham's Monument) is a memorial in the style of an ancient Greek temple on Penshaw Hill in the metropolitan borough of the City of Sunderland, North East England. It is located near the village of Penshaw, between the towns of Washington and Houghton-le-Spring in historic County Durham. The monument was built between 1844 and 1845 to commemorate John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792–1840), Governor-General of British North America and author of the Durham Report on the future governance of the American territories. Owned by the National Trust since 1939, it is a Grade I listed structure.
The monument was designed by John and Benjamin Green and built by Thomas Pratt of Bishopwearmouth using local gritstone at a cost of around £6000; the money was raised by subscription. On 28 August 1844, while it was partially complete, its foundation stone was laid by the 2nd Earl of Zetland in a Masonic ceremony which drew tens of thousands of spectators. Based on the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, it is a tetrastyle temple of the Doric order, with eighteen columns—seven along its longer sides and four along its shorter ones—and no roof or cella (inner chamber).
One column contains a spiral staircase leading to a parapeted walkway along the entablature. This staircase was closed to the public in 1926 after a 15-year-old boy fell to his death from the top of the monument. The structure fell into disrepair in the 1930s and was fenced off, then repaired in 1939. It has since undergone further restoration, including extensive work in 1979 during which its western side was dismantled. Floodlit at night since 1988, it is often illuminated in different colours to mark special occasions. The National Trust began to offer supervised tours of the walkway in 2011.
Penshaw Monument is a local landmark, visible from up to away. It appears on the crest of Sunderland A.F.C. and is viewed nationally as a symbol of the North East. It has been praised for the grandeur, simplicity and symbolic significance of its design, especially when seen from a distance. However, critics have said it is poorly constructed and lacks purpose; nineteenth-century architectural journals condemned its lack of a roof and the hollowness of its columns and walls. It features no depiction of the man it honours, and has been widely described as a folly.
Location
Penshaw Monument stands on the south-western edge of the summit of Penshaw Hill, an isolated knoll formed by the erosion of an escarpment of the Durham Magnesian Limestone Plateau. The National Trust landholding at the site totals , including of deciduous woodland to the west of the monument. The woodland is split into Dawson's Plantation in the north and Penshaw Wood in the south. Both the summit of the hill and the woodland are considered Sites of Nature Conservation Interest by Sunderland City Council.
The monument's car park is accessible from Chester Road (the A183); three footpaths lead from the car park to the monument, which can also be reached from Grimestone Bank in the north-west and Hill Lane in the south. The National Heritage List for England gives the monument's statutory address as Hill Lane, but Sunderland City Council lists the property as located on Chester Road. There have been few changes to the site since the monument's construction, although signs, fences and floodlights have been added, and footpaths have been improved by the National Trust. There is an Ordnance Survey trig point to the west of the monument.
The site receives over 60,000 visitors every year; people come to visit the monument, admire the views or engage in walking, jogging or photography. The Trust has placed a geocache at the site. The Penshaw Bowl, an Easter egg rolling competition for children, takes place on the hill every Maundy Thursday; this tradition is over a century old. The hill is also popular for Bonfire Night and New Year celebrations.
The surrounding area was formerly industrialised, but is now mainly arable farmland. The site is in the Shiney Row ward; it is south-west of Sunderland, north-east of Chester-le-Street, south-east of Washington and north of Houghton-le-Spring. To the north is the Washington Wetland Centre, managed by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust; to the south is Herrington Country Park. The monument is visible from away on a sunny day and can be seen from the A1 road; from the hill, it is sometimes possible to see the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland and the central tower of Durham Cathedral, as well as the sea.
History of the site There is evidence that Penshaw Hill may have been an Iron Age hillfort: the remains of what may be ramparts have been identified at the site, and the expansive views from the hill would have made it a strategically advantageous location for a fort. In March 1644, during the First English Civil War, the hill served as an encampment for an army of Scottish Covenanters who fled there after a failed attack on Newcastle before the Battle of Boldon Hill. The hill is associated with the local legend of the Lambton Worm; a folk song written by C. M. Leumane in 1867 describes the worm wrapping itself "ten times roond Pensha Hill". The hill is the site of an 18th-century limestone quarry on Dawson's Plantation, which is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest; farming and quarrying on nearby land continued after the monument's construction.
The landholding is on the north-eastern edge of the historical township of Penshaw; the original village of Old Penshaw is approximately from the monument. After Penshaw Colliery opened in 1792, a new pit village was established to the south-west of the original village – it was known as New Penshaw. The earliest record of Penshaw is in the Boldon Book of 1183, where it is described as being leased by William Basset from a Jordan de Escoland, later Jordan de Dalton. Other former landowners of the vill include the Bowes-Lyon and Lambton families. The land on which the monument stands was eventually passed to the Vane-Tempest-Stewart estate and became the property of Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, who gifted it as the site of the structure.
Conception and construction Background
John George Lambton (born 1792) was the son of William Henry Lambton and Lady Anne Barbara Frances Villiers. He attended Eton College, then joined the 10th Royal Hussars in 1809. Lambton became Member of Parliament for County Durham in 1813; politically, he had a reputation for radicalism and proposing electoral reform, earning him the nickname "Radical Jack". In 1828 he was raised to the peerage, becoming Baron Durham. In 1830 Durham was made Lord Privy Seal in Earl Grey's cabinet and was charged with producing a draft of the bill that became the Reform Act 1832. He resigned his position in 1833, and was created Earl of Durham shortly afterwards. He was a Freemason and became Deputy Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1834.
The second Melbourne ministry appointed him Ambassador to Russia in 1835; he spent two years in the post. In 1838, Lord Durham agreed to become Governor-General of British North America, and was sent to the British colony of Lower Canada (now Quebec) to deal with rebellions in the region. After a failed attempt to exile rebel leaders to Bermuda, he resigned from the post and left Canada after five months. His Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839) recommended that Lower Canada merge with the English-speaking province of Upper Canada to anglicise its French-speaking inhabitants; it also advocated limited self-government for the colony.
After an illness lasting several months, thought to be tuberculosis, he died on 28 July 1840 in Cowes, Isle of Wight. On 3 August, his body was taken in his own yacht to Sunderland, then in a steamship to Lambton Castle. His funeral took place on 10 August, and was attended by over 300 Freemasons; they wanted to perform a Masonic ceremony for the occasion, but were asked not to do so by Durham's family. The ceremony began at the castle, where the Earl lay in state in the dining room. A procession, consisting of around 450 people in carriages and hundreds more on foot, then conveyed the body to the parish church of St Mary and St Cuthbert, Chester-le-Street, where Durham was buried in his family vault. A large crowd gathered to observe the procession; its size has been estimated as between 30,000 and 50,000 people. The Marquess of Londonderry, a political opponent of Durham's, travelled from London to act as a pallbearer at the funeral.
1840–1842: proposals and selection of the site
At a meeting at the Lambton Arms pub in Chester-le-Street on 19 August 1840, it was decided to form a Provisional Committee to raise funds for a monument to the Earl by subscription. The next day, at the Assembly Rooms in Newcastle, a committee of 33 men was formed for that purpose; it included the mayors of Newcastle and Gateshead. The chairman of the committee was Henry John Spearman. The following motion was put forward by William Ord MP:
Around £500 () was pledged at this meeting. There were initially disagreements about the site of the monument: proposals included Durham, the Earl's territorial designation; Chester-le-Street, his burial place; Sunderland, where he had trading connections; and Newcastle, due to its size. In a letter to the Durham Chronicle, published in October 1840, an anonymous subscriber to the monument urged that members of the public be allowed to submit designs, and that the final design be chosen by subscribers. The letter warned of a "vicious system of jobbing" in which the exercise of private influence led to the adoption of inferior designs, which it claimed had influenced the planning of other monuments such as Nelson's Column.
At another meeting at the Bridge Hotel in Sunderland on 28 January 1842, William Hutt MP proposed that "the monument should be of an architectural character", and suggested Penshaw Hill as a location because it was the Earl's property, and the monument would be visible from much of County Durham and close to the East Coast Main Line. Durham's wife had expressed support for this site before her death. According to The Times, "a more suitable spot for the erection of a monument to the late lamented Earl could not have been selected". Hutt hoped to erect a statue of Durham, and read out a letter from a sculptor who had offered to make one. By this point, around £3000 () had been subscribed. More money was later raised by a London-based committee.
1842–1843: selection of the design The committee sought advice from the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Its secretary, Thomas Leverton Donaldson, advised approaching five or six skilled architects named by the Institute privately, rather than advertising publicly for designs. Donaldson told Hutt that if a public call for designs was made, the most skilled architects would not compete. The Institute surveyed Penshaw Hill and produced instructions to the architects, which described the hill and indicated subscribers' preference for a column. The instructions stated that the project could not cost more than £3000. Six of the designs submitted to the committee were exhibited at the institute's premises in London before they were seen in the north. These were all either columns or obelisks, each topped with a statue of the Earl. At a meeting in Sunderland on 8 July 1842, subscribers examined proposals by seven architects. These were:
John Augustus Cory—Two designs: a column in the style of Italianate architecture; and a column based on those of the Temple of Hephaestus Thomas Leverton Donaldson—Design unknown Harvey Lonsdale Elmes—Two designs: a Grecian column topped by a temple containing an urn; and a column with projecting balconies in imitation of a Roman rostral column Charles Fowler—A Norman column, similar to those in the nave of Durham Cathedral