Lambton, Durham

Description
Lambton, a township in Bourn Moor ecclesiastical parish, Durham, on the river Wear, near the Darlington and Stanhope railways, 6 1/4 miles NE of Durham. Post town and money order and telegraph office, Fence Houses, which is the nearest railway station. Acreage, 684; population, 164. The manor belonged formerly to the D'Arcys and the Hed-worths, 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 Lamb-ton 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. The village of New Lambton is also in this parish.