Lambton Castle

North Lodge, Lambton Park, is a castellated country house dating to approximately 1820-8, designed by Ignatius Bonomi for John George Lambton. It incorporates the core of an earlier 18th-century house, Harraton Hall, and includes additions from 1862-5 by Sidney Smirke, based on a design by John Dobson, which were largely demolished in 1932. The house is constructed of ashlar sandstone with Welsh slate roofs and stone chimney stacks. It has a complex U-plan, including a detached south-east tower. The architectural style is predominantly Perpendicular, characterized by mainly two-light windows with hoodmoulds.

The south front, the work of Bonomi, comprises two linked blocks and a detached east tower. The three-story, five-bay west block features a tall, octagonal stair tower, windows with pointed lower and square-headed upper sections, a corbelled round turret on the second floor, and an embattled parapet. The set-back, three-story, six-bay east block refronts the 18th-century core and has pointed windows in the upper two stories, featuring panels of blank tracery that conceal the floor level, alongside flying buttresses between bays and an embattled parapet with crocketed pinnacles. The tall, octagonal east tower has a splayed base, staggered loops, a corbelled-out embattled parapet, and a taller round stair turret (the parapet of which has been removed). The west return was partly refaced following the demolition of the 1862 additions; including a two-story, three-bay north section by Bonomi, linked by a bay and porte-cochère. The porte-cochère, constructed in 1932 from Smirke's north arcade, features four-panelled octagonal turrets, four-centred arches, and embattled parapets. The complex north front includes a split-level east wing which is a fragment of a 1862 service wing; a three-story, three-bay centre that refronts the 18th-century core with 24-pane sashes on the ground floor; and a projecting staircase addition from 1862 on the west elevation. Low-pitched roofs and octagonal stacks are mostly hidden by the parapets.

The interior retains a central 18th-century core, including one room featuring re-used early 18th-century panelling, and two rooms on the south side with Palladian plasterwork, including enriched doorcases, a fireplace, and a broken-pedimented overmantel flanked by shell niches. Other large ground-floor rooms alongside the staircase were designed by Smirke in a Tudor style, incorporating linenfold panelling, carved wood fireplaces, and beamed ceilings.

Lambton Castle was the home of John George Lambton, who later became the 1st Earl of Durham, a notable radical statesman and co-author of the 1832 Reform Bill.