Description

Visit the Penshaw Monument in County Durham, a half-size model of the Theseion (also known as the Hephaesteion) in Athens. The early Victorian monument, built in 1844, dominates the skyline near Sunderland. It was designed by the local father-and-son team of civil engineer-architects, John and Benjamin Green, who also designed the neoclassical façade of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society.

The point of the Penshaw Monument was to honour the memory of the local aristocrat John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792-1840), who had acquired the nickname ‘Radical Jack’. The reason was his independent-minded tenure of the Governor-Generalship of British North America in Canada after the rebellions of 1834-8. Durham had outraged the British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, by his Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839). This had recommended that the new colony of Canada be granted a degree of autonomy and responsible government. He had also argued for leniency to be shown to the rebel leaders. His perceived support of colonial revolution meant that he was forced to resign.

But Jack Lambton’s relative radicalism in constitutional affairs, which was perceived as sufficiently ‘Athenian’ in democratic spirit to warrant the Athenian temple architecture of the Theseion folly, was not paralleled by any sensitivity towards the poor. After Eton and the army, he had inherited a huge fortune based on mining activities in the north-east (his monument has recently had to be underpinned because of subsidence caused by mines underneath it). His previous nickname had been ‘Jog Along Jack,’ because when asked what was an adequate income for an English gentleman, he had replied, ‘a man might jog along comfortably enough on £40,000 a year (at least 2.5 million pounds today). A complicated man.