Lambton Castle

Lambton Castle was built on the north side of the river Wear round the core of the older Harraton Hall. The previous Lambton home, Lambton Hall stood on the south bank of the Wear and was demolished in 1797. The only remains of Lambton Hall is its former brewhouse (now Lambton House), much rebuilt, but basically 17th century in date. Harraton Hall was in the centre of Harraton Manor which had been the property of the Hedworth family since the early fifteenth century. In 1696, John and Anne Hedworth's eldest daughter, Dorothy Hedworth, heiress to the Hedworth estate, married Ralph Lambton and so the property passed into Lambton hands. It was William Lambton (1764-1797), grandson of Ralph and Dorothy Lambton, who began the replacement of Harraton Hall with a new edifice which was to be called Lambton Hall paid for with coal mining wealth accumulated from the mines which ran below the castle. However, work on the hall stopped abruptly when he died prematurely of consumption in Italy in 1801. Fortunately, he left a son and heir born in 1792. This was John George Lambton who later became known "Radical Jack"

Above: John George Lambton (1792-1840), First Earl of Durham and one-time Governor General of Canada

J.G. Lambton re-started work on the hall when he came of age in 1813 and appointed Ignatius Bonomi (1787-1870) as architect, the son of renowned architect Joseph Bonomi The Elder (1739-1808), the Italian architect and draughtsman. It was in the 1820's that J.G. Lambton decided that Lambton Hall should have a grander appearance than a mere hall and so they commenced turning the building into a castle by adding features such as turrets and battlements in order to embellish the outward appearance of the building, the result of which can be seen in several of the pictures on this page.

In the 1860's, much damage was caused to the 'castle' due to mining subsidence ironically caused by the same mines from which Lambton wealth had been obtained. Architects John Dobson and Sydney Smirke (Dobson's son-in-law) were engaged to re-build the castle but Dobson died in 1862 and Smirke carried out the plan in accordance with Dobson's design. However, much of Bonomi's original work was lost during this time.

Lambton Castle today is much reduced in size compared to the past, having become costly and unmanageable. In an effort to remedy this, the castle was partly demolished in 1932, when most of the service wing and two-thirds of the west block were removed - this included much of the work done by Dobson and Smirke in the 1860's. Also at this time, many of the contents were auctioned off to pay death duties and the family moved to the smaller Biddick Hall on the estate. Today the castle stands empty, but continues to be maintained and remains the ancestral home of the Lambton family. The castle and grounds have been used several times as a film set and also as a wedding venue.

The castle is still at the heart of the 1,500 acre Lambton Park, which largely remains private property, although permissive walking routes were opened up to the general public on the south side of the river in July 2020. In days-gone-by, it was an oasis of greenness and tranquillity, when the park was surrounded by industrial pollution, generated by the area's many pits. Indeed, old maps show several of these in the park grounds themselves but these were mostly surface or 'bell' pits. The castle is not the preferred residence of the Lambtons today, with that honour going to Biddick Hall, an elegant but smaller structure in the eastern part of the estate (see the Biddick Hall page of this website for more information).

Pevsner describes Lambton Castle thus:

There can be no two views about the picturesqueness of Lambton Castle in the variety of its embattled towers and turrets, its buttressed S façade and its retaining walls as they appear above the River Wear across the sweeping lawns and groves of its extensive grounds. Nothing of the building except the solid, beautifully biscuit-coloured stone, is in fact genuine, not even its name. There was no castle here. The mock-castle was built round the core of Harraton Hall which the Lambtons acquired by marriage in 1688. Their previous home, Lambton Hall, demolished in 1797, stood on the opposite side of The Wear. According to Surtees, it was double-pile with gable wings, a terraced garden and a sundial dated 1670. The two garden figures are now at Biddick Hall.

The decision to move the family seat to Harrison Hall was probably made when William Henry Lambton inherited it in 1794. Joseph Bonomi's designs of 1796 show a symmetrical, embattled house with neo-classical interiors, typical of a former assistant of Robert Adam. Although inscribed "Lambton Hall", they were for the new Harraton Hall, to judge from the large sums spent there between 1795 and 1801. When W.H. Lambton died in 1797, complete rebuilding was abandoned. Instead, Bonomi made additions to the existing hall, already altered or rebuilt earlier in the C18. In the nucleus of the house, two rooms still have early C18 decoration.

Work stopped in 1801, but "buildings and improvements to Hall and Park" resumed in 1813 when John George Lambton came of age. In 1815, Joseph Bonomi's son, Ignatius Bonomi, was engaged to design a new entrance lodge and outbuildings. From about 1820 until 1828 (when "Radical Jack" was made Lord Durham) he further transformed the Hall, giving the existing part new private apartments and a new

façade and adding a short wing and tower at its E end. To the W he added a block of public rooms. Within thirty years, the building showed signs of collapse; it stood over a forgotten coal pit. After 1855, more mining meant the demolition of half of the W part. In 1862, Dobson proposed rebuilding it, almost to Bonomi's plan but in Perp style. He left out Bonomi's SW arcade and added a half-octagonal bay to the gallery. A huge new N service wing, financed by estate and colliery improvements, nearly doubled the size of the house. Dobson died in 1862 before building began, but his son-in-law, Sydney Smirke, carried out "the plan exactly according to the design by Mr Dobson", venturing "on a departure from his design of the Hall (which design had hardly matured at the time of his seizure)". Smirke's hall, based on Hampton Court Chapel, had too an ecclesiastical an air for the client. The C20 found all this too much and demolished (in 1932) most of the service wing and two-thirds of the W block (i.e. Smirke's rebuilding).

When we examine what survives, we must bear in mind the vast amount that is missing. The ENTRANCE FRONT (N), is particularly mutilated. At the E end, a jumble, originally hidden by the demolished service wing which, with its square towers answered the climax of the façade, Smirke's great hall, 11ft higher than Bonomi's, with a huge W window. Lions (by Beale) on the gables originally guarded the forecourt. The present ungainly porte-cochère with Perp-panelled turrets and defenders (in imitation of Raby, etc) is the remaining bay of an arcade that stretched all along the W wing. The surviving third of the W wing, with heavily moulded windows, is Bonomi's. Set back in the centre of this front, the C18 core of the house: two-and-a-half storeys, the upper windows made Perp by Smirke, those on the ground floor still early C18 sashes. In the angle, Smirke's staircase projection with a twelve-light Perp window. More Perp windows from Smirke's W façade re-used in the 1932 W FRONT. The S FRONT is all Bonomi's now that Smirke's rebuilt W end has gone. At the W end, five bays with octagonal (SW) and round (SE) angle towers. The rest of the façade, the old two-and-a-half storey house cleverly disguised as a 'chapel-like-termination', is much more dramatic. Between pinacled, detached buttresses, the upper two storeys of windows are united to look like huge single Perp openings. Masking the floor levels, panels of blank tracery. Standing apart at the E end, now that the linking wing has gone, an octagonal tower with a splayed base and a circular stair-turret modelled on the late C14 Guy's Tower at Warwick Castle. All along this front, an embattled terrace overlooking the gorge.

The entrance was always, as it is now, through a small vestibule into the DINING ROOM (now hall), redecorated in ponderous Tudor by Smirke (but in 1979 totally masked by a 'fairy grotto'). Next to it, Smirke's cramped staircase and, to the S, the LIBRARY, also Tudor. In the main C18 room on the N, bolection-moulded panelling and fireplace: quite ordinary. On the S side of the C18 rooms Bonomi made into the private STUDY and SITTING ROOM, the latter still with Palladian decoration (enriched doorcases and overmantel with broken pediments, shell-headed niches flanking the fireplace). A dressing room and bedroom in the demolished wing completed the suite to the E. W of entrance front, a small neo-Norman cottage with arcaded porch.

The groves in the park, probably never professionally landscaped though naturally picturesque, were mostly replanted in the 1930's. At the NW entrance Bonomi's heavily classical gate-piers surmounted by massive blocks carved with the Lambton insignia. The SW drive passes over the Wear just without the park walls over the medieval NEW or CHESTER BRIDGE, beneath Bonomi's tall arched GATEWAY (plus lodge) of 1815 and through the parkland of the original Lambton Hall before crossing the Wear again in one 82ft span by Bonomi's magnificent LAMB BRIDGE (lambs on the abutments). On the S. bank, the only relic of Lambton Hall, its former brewhouse (now LAMBTON HOUSE), much rebuilt but basically C17, with seven two-light mullioned windows, gabled semi-dormers and blank quatrefoils alternating above them. Under the front gardens the foundations of the Hall.

Selection of Images of Lambton Castle: