and Roman architecture. A booklet produced by Tyne and Wear County Council Museums compares Penshaw Monument to Jesmond Old Cemetery, whose gates were designed by John Dobson; it says that the monument "shares the Arcadian intentions of Dobson's Cemetery, but is very much more successful". In her survey of the monument commissioned by the National Trust, Penny Middleton states that its "closest architectural and cultural relation" may be the National Monument of Scotland, an unfinished Grecian temple on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Description Penshaw Monument is long, wide and high, making it the biggest structure serving only as a memorial in North East England. It is made of gritstone ashlar, which was yellow at first, but has darkened. The stone was originally held together by steel pins and brackets. Graffiti is present on many areas of the monument, in the form of both carvings and ink. Its foundations originally sat on limestone below the ground. The base consists of the upper stylobate and the lower stereobate—the columns sit on the stylobate, which is made of large gritstone blocks. The height of the base varies from at the south-west corner to at the south-east. When the monument was built there were no steps leading up to the stylobate. The floor consists of setts, which are pointed in mortar and laid to falls to diagonal flagstones. These flagstones direct rainwater to a central gulley. The monument is a tetrastyle structure. It has 18 tapered, unfluted columns: seven along the north- and south-facing sides and four facing the east and west. The columns are in diameter, and high. There are two parapeted walkways running from east to west at the top of the monument; the parapets are tall. One column—the second from the east on the south-facing side—contains a 74-step spiral staircase leading to the southern walkway. The columns support a deep entablature, whose blocking course serves as the walkways; the columns, and the walls of the foundation and entablature, are hollow. The entablature is made up of the architrave, frieze and cornice; the architrave and cornice are simple in design, and the frieze is adorned with triglyphs, although these are stylised and lack grooves. There is a triangular pediment at each end of the entablature; the total height of the entablature and pediments is . The structure has no roof, leading The Illustrated London News to call it hypaethral; however, The Civil