•  Lambton, County Durham

          Click on the map for other historical maps of this place

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Lambton like this:

LAMBTON, a township in Chester-le-Street parish, Durhamshire; on the river Wear, near the Darlington and Stanhope railways, 6½ miles NNE of Durham. Acres, 652. Pop., 130. Houses, 27. The manor belonged formerly to the D'Arcys and the Hedworths; belongs now to the Earl of Durham; and gives him the title of Viscount. ...

---

Lambton Castle, the Earl of Durham's seat, occupies the site of Harraton Hall, an old mansion of the D 'Arcys; stands on a height, sloping to the Wear, amid beautiful scenery; sustained great damage in 1854, by the subsiding of a coal mine under it, which had long previously been worked and forgotten; was partly restored, partly rebuilt, in 1862, after designs by Bonomi; exhibits a mixture of the Gothic and the Tudor styles; and contains some interesting pictures. The mine beneath it was bricked up, very laboriously, in the years 1857-1865, with an expenditure of about 10,000,000 bricks. Worm Hill, a conical mound resembling an ancient barrow, a little NE of Lambton Castle park, is the scene of a curious allegorical tradition, that a terrible worm or serpent there was heroically destroyed by a member of the Lambton family, armed in a coat of mail, studded with razored blades. The Worm well, in the vicinity of the Worm hill, was formerly in high repute as "a wishing well", but has disappeared. There are brine springs.

Lambton through time

Lambton is now part of Chester le Street district. Click here for graphs and data of how Chester le Street has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Lambton itself, go to Units and Statistics.

---

Not where you were looking for?

Click here for more detailed advice on finding places within A Vision of Britain through Time, and maybe some references to other places called "Lambton".