page_title: Penshaw Monument
section_title: History of the site
hierarchical_section_title: Penshaw Monument / Location / History of the site
caption_attribution_description: English: A view to Penshaw Monument from Herrington Country Park
context_page_description: Penshaw Monument is a memorial in the style of an ancient Greek temple on Penshaw Hill in the City of Sunderland, North East England. It is near the village of Penshaw, between the towns of Washington and Houghton-le-Spring in the historic County Durham. The monument was built between 1844 and 1845 to commemorate John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, Governor-General of British North America and author of the Durham report. Owned by the National Trust since 1939, it is a Grade I listed building under the name of the Earl of Durham's Monument.
  John and Benjamin Green designed Penshaw Monument. It was 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 Thomas Dundas, 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.
context_section_description: 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 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) 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.
caption: The monument seen from Herrington
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