The Stone Pillar

We need little excuse to post a good photograph. After the Grave, perhaps the most iconic image of the Point is the stone pillar at the end of First Terrace. It’s Grade 2 listed (together with the wharf) and is described

‘At the southern end is a gate pier of rusticated sandstone, of square plan with moulded cornice and ball finial’.

Stone Pillar looking towards Second Terrace

The pillar was once part of a pair that stood at the entrance to a cobbled and tree lined avenue leading up to the Summer House (Number 5 the Lane). Today, nothing remains of the avenue but can be imagined by looking up the wint on First Terrace. The Summer House was once the look-out for merchants waiting for ships returning from the West Indies after voyages of more than a year.

The small stone posts on the front of the Terrace were also part of the avenue. All that is left of the companion post is on the corner of the low stone wall at the start of the Second Terrace.

It was probably built by Robert Lawson during his extensive building program in the first quarter of the 18th century. William Stout, merchant of Lancaster, in his autobiography jotted down this criticism about his contemporary Lawson -

‘but employed the profit in superfluity of buying land at great prices and building chargeable and unnecessary houses, barns and gardens and other fancies, and costly furniture that he overshot himself’

Were the gateposts one of Robert Lawson’s ‘fancies’ that led in part to his bankruptcy in 1728 owing £14,000?

Flat calm at sunrise

For a Quaker, where trust in commerce was paramount, bankruptcy would have been a major embarrassment. Lawson stayed in business until the 1750’s and managed to repay his creditors 14 shillings in the pound. He continued to live at the Point until his death in 1773 aged 83

Information sourced from Hugh Cunliffe’s the Story of Sunderland Point