page_title: Lambton Worm
section_title: The worm's wrath
hierarchical_section_title: Lambton Worm / The legend / The worm's wrath
caption_attribution_description: English: Worm Hill at Fatfield, Washington, beside the River Wear, taken by Peter Hughes on Monday 2 July 2007.
context_page_description: The Lambton Worm is a legend from County Durham in North East England in the UK. The story takes place around the River Wear, and is one of the area's most famous pieces of folklore, having been adapted from written and oral tradition into pantomime and song formats.
context_section_description: Eventually, the worm grows extremely large and the well becomes poisonous. The villagers start to notice livestock going missing and discover that the fully-grown worm has emerged from the well and coiled itself around a local hill.
  Earlier, and local, versions of the legend associate the hill with Worm Hill, in Fatfield. In  most versions of the story, the worm is large enough to wrap itself around the hill seven times. It is said that one can still see the marks of the worm on Worm Hill.  However, in the later song the hill is Penshaw Hill on which the Penshaw Monument now stands.
  The worm terrorises the nearby villages, eating sheep, preventing cows from producing milk and snatching away small children. It then heads towards Lambton Castle, where the Lord (John Lambton's aged father) manages to sedate the creature in what becomes a daily ritual of offering the worm the milk of nine good cows – twenty gallons, or a filled wooden/stone trough.
  A number of brave villagers try to kill the beast, but are quickly dispatched. When a chunk is cut off the worm, it simply reattaches the missing piece. Visiting knights also try to assault the beast, but none survives. When annoyed, the worm uproots trees by coiling its tail around them, then creates devastation by waving around the uprooted trees like a club.
caption: Worm Hill, Fatfield, Washington
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