The Freemasons Hid Something In This Monument

Welcome to Ancient Greece. Well, the the northeast of England actually. This is Pension Monument, an 18-column memorial built to commemorate a man named John Lambton. A structure so big it might leave you wondering what exactly a person needs to do within their lifetime to warrant a monument of this scale. And we're about to make our way over there on foot to find out. Along the way I'm going to tell you about its two hidden features and how it went from being slated by critics to becoming an important local landmark. So let's go see if we can find it. Now today's adventure brings us up to the northeast of England, just outside the city of Sunderland. And this is a brand new area for this channel. We've unlocked a new zone thanks to all of you subscribers, members and everybody supporting over on Patreon. And we're heading towards Pensure Monument. But you might think from looking at the spelling, as I originally did, that it would be pronounced Pensure. But I have been informed, and if there are any locals watching, do feel free to confirm it's not Pensure, it's Pensure. Pensure Monument that sits on Pensure Hill. And there are a few questions surrounding this place. The why. Why is it so big? And what's it here for as well? And what are these hidden features? And we should probably start with the very man that is here to commemorate, John George Lambton. Now John Lambton will be known to some as the first Earl of Durham. And he was a man who had a very interesting life, and a short life as well. He only lived to the age of 48, which kind of makes this monument even more impressive. He was born in 1792, and he had a bit of a rough time. His father died when he was young from tuberculosis, his mum didn't want to be much involved in raising him, and later in life he lost his first wife and four of his children to tuberculosis as well. The same infection that was responsible for John's death in 1840. And by all the accounts that I've managed to find, it's his character that stands out as much as his actions and the things he accomplished in life. It sounds like he was a very tenacious, motivated person, often described as radical, much as his father was as well, and he was incredibly well connected. He was born into a powerful and very wealthy family, the Lambton family, but despite that it seems that he was able to connect and understand people from other walks of life. In fact one of the things he's most well known for is championing electoral reform, bringing voting powers to people who previously had none. So that's one thing that could explain his seeming popularity. And he was also heavily involved with the Freemasons, and was at one time Deputy Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England. Now I don't know a lot about Freemasonry, but from what I understand this is kind of at the top of the organization, the top of the tree. In other words he knew a lot of people, and he seemed to be very good at bridging the gap between different social groups and classes, which if true is especially impressive given the life he was born into. Because when I say he was wealthy, well his family owned a lot of mines throughout the northeast here, a region with a rich mining history, and he even had his And I don't want to make any assumptions about you watching this right now, so I'll just speak to myself and say well that's a lifestyle that I can't really relate to. The whole story to his life is too long to cover in this video in full detail, but one other thing you might be interested in knowing is that in 1825 he was chairman of something called the New Zealand Company during Britain's first and failed attempt at colonizing New Zealand. So there's a lot of stories to John's life, and naturally with history from the 17 and 1800s it's not often long before the c-word comes in when we're looking into British history. And we can kind of see a bit of the monument peeking over the top of that hill there. And after John died in 1840, discussions started taking place of a way to commemorate him and memorialize him, and the idea for a monument was put forward. It took a while though, it was four years after John died until construction of this started, and in between that time there was a lot of back and forth discussion, fundraising, planning, designs, and there was a chance that this thing could have looked entirely different, because at one point the idea was for it to be a singular column. There were a number of designs made in this style, but they were eventually dismissed with a few people thinking it was just a ridiculous idea to have a single column just standing all by itself on a hill. It didn't make any sense to some, but eventually several conversations later they landed on this design, created by a father and son architect duo, inspired by the temples of Greece. It was completed in 1845 and it's said to be directly inspired by the temple of Hephaestus in Athens. And whilst I'm sure a lot of people like the design, it did receive some heavy criticism when it was first built, with some others including architects saying it was just a silly design, it made no sense, why this? But there were of course I'm sure a great many people who were impressed by it, and over the years it's become an important local landmark, and it's even featured on the crest of the nearby football club Sunderland AFC. And personally I'm very interested to hear what you think of it, and it should be just over these trees here, so let's go and take a look at it up close, and I'll also show you these two hidden features. Here we go, Pension Monument. Wow it is big, 70 feet tall I believe. Now these two hidden features, if you've ever been here you'll know what this first one is, but if you saw this place from a distance, or from a photograph, it's probably not something you would expect. Wow it's such a cool view. I love the scale of it. Now here it is. The other hidden feature is not so easy to spot, and much lesser known. Unfortunately sealed up these days, but inside this column is a spiral staircase. It takes you all the way to the top, allowing you to walk across this side section. And I do wish it was open, but in recent years, well it's been closed off most of the time. It does open sometimes for arranged visits, but I believe it's more of a safety issue, because there have been some incidents here over the years, and one in particular in 1926 when unfortunately a young 15 year old boy fell to his death from here. And so since then there's been a little bit more control placed on the access. You know it was built just over 180 years ago now, and safety standards then were a bit different to what they are today. And I don't know why, but it feels bigger than I expected. I've never been here before, I've never been up to this part of the country, but I like it. And you may notice that there's a bit of a difference in colour as well. We've got these heavily stained columns, and then some cleaner sections up there, and that's because throughout the years and the decades this place has fallen into various states of disrepair, collapse, it's been vandalized at times. But in recent years it's owned and maintained by the National Trust, and a lot of working money has been put into repairing it, keeping it accessible, and maintaining the footpaths that allow people to come and visit. I think there's one that goes down this hill. Yeah, so this is kind of the main visitor car park. Most people will enter up this way. Now this other hidden feature though, the real hidden feature, we're gonna have to do a bit of looking around. And if there are any architects watching maybe you can help out, because I may be about to embarrass myself, but we need something called a foundation stone, which I suspect may be underneath here somewhere. But when this place was built, within the foundation stone was placed a vial, a container of Victorian coins. And I don't know enough about architecture to know if there's a particular place to look for a foundation stone. My dumb guess and educated guess is that it could be somewhere in the base, and probably concealed by other pieces. But I was just curious to know if there'd be any kind of engraving, some kind of sign that we could see, that might signify where it is. I've done quite a lot of digging around this, and to the best of my knowledge it's still in here somewhere. That looks a bit different to everything for some reason, don't know what that's about. But yeah, somewhere in here there is some real hidden treasure, and a few more recent carvings. I can't see anything that looks different so far, nothing yet. These are all lights I believe by the way, so on an evening apparently it looks amazing. I won't be able to see it today unfortunately, but the whole structure gets lit up at night time. Yeah this all looks very ordinary, so this hidden stash of Victorian coins might have to remain a mystery. It's a bit unusual, maybe never to be retrieved. Oh, this stone was laid by Thomas Earl of Zetland, Grandmaster of the Free and Accepted Masons of England, assisted by the Brethren of the Provinces of Durham and Northumberland on the 28th of August 1844. Oh, I'm an idiot, should have looked here first. Being the foundation stone of a memorial to be erected to the memory of John George Earl of Durham, who after representing the County of Durham in Parliament for 15 years was raised to the peerage and subsequently held the offices of Lord Privy Seal Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister at the Court of St Petersburg and Governor General of Canada. He died on the 28th of July 1840 in the 49th year of his age. The monument will be erected by the private subscriptions of his fellow countrymen, admirers of his distinguished talents and exemplary private virtues. Donated to the National Trust September 1st 1939. So does that mean the coins, the treasure behind this? Maybe. There's somewhere in there anyway. Now as always there is a lot more to these stories. We're talking about the life history of a man born in 1792 here and then the whole of this project trying to plan and put this together. So if you've got any questions about other details do let us know in the comments. But lastly I want to know of course what do you think of it? Do you like it? Do you think it's monstrous? I'm a fan. It's unlike anything I've seen before. Very unique. I love the scale of it and the placement here on Penshire Hill gives you just great panoramic views. Just got to watch out for any enormous and dangerous looking worms. And if you want to come and visit this for yourself it's going to be added to our adventure map over on Patreon and here on YouTube in the members section very soon with some additional visitor information and we've also got a bunch more behind the scenes and exclusive podcast episodes on Patreon too. Hope you've enjoyed this episode though. Thank you so much for watching, supporting the channel. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't done already. We've got plenty more adventures on the way and fingers crossed I'll see you on the next one.