Place name
John George Lambton (April 12, 1792 – July 28, 1840) was 1st Earl of Durham who was known as Radical Jack. Born into the aristocratic Villiers family (his mother was daughter to George Bussy Villiers, 4th Earl of Jersey), he was wealthy, connected and a rebel. He was a Whig statesman, colonial administrator, Governor General and high commissioner of British North America. A leading reformer, he played a major role in the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832. He later served as ambassador to Russia. He was a founding member and chairman of the New Zealand Company that played a key role in the first attempt at colonisation of the country. George Woodcock describe him as: “Proud, wayward, immensely rich, with romantic good looks and an explosive temper.” He was one of those “natural rebels who turn their rebellious energies to constructive purposes. Both at home and abroad he became a powerful exponent of the early nineteenth-century liberal spirit.” He earned the epithet Jog Along Jack after being asked what he considered an adequate income for an English gentleman and replying that “a man might jog along comfortably enough on £40,000 a year” (equivalent to approximately £3,900,000 at 2014 values). In 1823 he bought the Prospect Place from the inheritors of Parliamentary agent James Meyrick’s estate but by 1831 it was in the hands of 1831 Charles Pepys, Lord Cottenham. He in turn sold the estate for development in 1850. On the sale of the Cottenham Park estate, the area to the north of the railway line was laid out with Pepys Road and Lambton Road by WS Sims, in anticipation of development. However ,the anticipated demand failed to materialise and work was slow. The first houses in Lambton Road were built on its west side, from 1882 onwards. By 1890 only about 10 to 12 houses had been built. The houses on the eastern side of the road followed in a second major spurt off development between 1898 and 1905.
