The Newcastle suburb of Lambton has links to the English aristocracy.
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The suburb was named after Lambton Colliery.
As reported in the Topics column in Wednesday’s Newcastle Herald, Thomas Croudace named the colliery in the 1860s after his family friend and former employer from England – Lord Lambton, Earl of Durham.
The village of Lambton is in Country Durham in England’s north-east.
The lord of the area today is Edward Lambton – the seventh Earl of Durham.
He inherited the estate from his father, Lord Antony Lambton, when he died in 2006 at age 84. The inheritance was estimated to be worth about £35 million.
Lord Antony Lambton was quite a character. He was caught in a political sex scandal, which was splashed across the British tabloids.
The now defunct News of the World obtained photographs of the lord in bed with a prostitute in 1973. He was also caught with cannabis.
He was a junior defence minister in Edward Heath's Conservative government at the time. He was forced to resign.
After his resignation, he left his second wife Belinda and their six children at Lambton Estate in County Durham.
He moved to Italy with his mistress Claire Ward and bought the palatial 400-year-old Villa Cetinale, which was originally built for Pope Alexander VII on the outskirts of Siena in the Tuscany region.
When he bought the estate it was run down. He retired there and spent decades restoring the villa and its gardens, which are considered among the most impressive in Italy.
He lived at the property with Claire for 30 years.
When he died he left his fortune to his son and heir, Edward.
Three of his daughters – Lady Lucinda Lambton, Lady Beatrix Nevill and Lady Anne Lambton – challenged the move in court, claiming they were each entitled to millions of pounds.
Under British rules of primogeniture, male heirs inherit aristocratic titles and entire estates.
But because the lord spent 30 years in Italy, his daughters argued they should be entitled to a share of his estate.
Edward launched High Court proceedings in London in 2013 to prevent his sisters from making claims on his inheritance.
In a joint statement before the hearing, the sisters said of their brother: “He has always thrown his toys out of the pram. The only difference this time is that the toys are his own family. It is terribly sad."
After accusations from both sides of greed, manipulation and deceit, an out-of-court settlement was reached.
The sisters received up to £1.5 million each from their brother.
Edward, who is known as Lord Durham, said he sold a portrait of his mother by artist Lucian Freud to fund the settlement.
It was one of the most intimate nude portraits by the artist – who is the grandson of Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychoanalysis) – ever to be sold.
The artwork reflected an affair between the artist and Edward’s mother.
Edward claimed he had trouble finding the money to settle with his sisters, due to the estate being in debt because of his father’s reckless spending.
He added that most of his father’s money was tied up in property.
“My father would have been very unhappy with this outcome,” he told the Daily Mail in 2014, of the settlement.
Edward understood why his sisters challenged his father’s will, but said: “I do not approve of it”.
“They weren’t left anything in the will, but my father had bought them all houses and provided for them from time to time,” he said.
