Penshaw Monument | folly, National Trust property (UK), Grade I Listed (UK)

 monument, folly, National Trust property (UK), Grade I Listed (UK)

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Penshaw Monument is a folly built in 1844 on Penshaw Hill (pronounced locally as /'pɛn,ʃə/), in former County Durham (now part of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear), North East England, between the towns of Washington and Houghton-le-Spring. It is dedicated to John George Lambton, first Earl of Durham and the first Governor of the Province of Canada.

The Monument stands 136 metres above sea level. Built as a half-sized replica of the renowned Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, the monument dominates the local landscape. Penshaw Monument was designed by John and Benjamin Green and built by Thomas Pratt of Sunderland, based on the Doric order. The Monument is the best preserved model of a Doric Hexastyle temple in Britain. The Marquess of Londonderry presented Penshaw Hill as a suitable site.

It is 100 feet (30 metres) long, 53 feet (16 metres) wide and 70 feet (20 metres) high. The columns are each 6 feet and 6 inches (2 metres) in diameter.

Resting on the columns is the entablature which itself can be split into three main parts. The architrave, the main spanning beam across the tops of the pillars. Above the architrave is the frieze, the central patterned section. Then the cornice is the upper part which projects outwards. Finally, the pediments are the triangular facings at each end of the Monument.

The foundation stone was laid by Thomas Dundas, 2nd Earl of Zetland (the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England) on 28 August 1844, four years after the death of the Earl.

One of the pillars contains a spiral staircase to a walkway around the top of the monument. This was closed to the public after a 15 year old boy, Temperley Arthur Scott, fell to his death on Easter Monday 1926. The boy was with three of his friends. There were about twenty other people at the top of the Monument at the time. Witnesses said that the boys went round the walkway twice and then decided to go around a third time. In order to pass from one side of the Monument to the other, they had to pass round the ends where there was no protecting wall.

It was acquired by the National Trust as a gift from the 5th Earl of Durham in 1939.