Durham won by the narrow margin of two wickets on an enthralling final day at Southport, with Tom Smith collecting superb figures of 5-25 from 16 overs in a losing cause.
Keaton Jennings (82) and Jack Burnham (52) added 123 runs for the third wicket to put Durham comfortably ahead in their pursuit of 247 runs to win at Trafalgar Road, but a superb spell from Smith in the afternoon session saw Durham stumble to 170/2 to 195/7.
It was then up to England's Ben Stokes (36) and youngster Adam Hickey (21*) to secure a tense win on a scorching hot day, with this victory pushing Durham into second in the first division after inflicting a second defeat on Lancashire in red-ball cricket this season, as the Red Rose were ultimately made to pay the price for being dismissed for 204 in their first innings.
Lancashire made the ideal start to the final day when Kyle Jarvis (1-48) had Mark Stoneman out lbw for one with the sixth ball of the day, but Jennings continued to anchor the run-chase perfectly. Initially finding company in Durham's top-scorer from the first innings, Scott Borthwick, Jennings was content to give Jarvis respect, while Nathan Buck faired much worse from his only four overs of the game after stepping in for James Anderson.
Buck's figures of 0-26 included successive boundaries for Borthwick (28), shortly after Stoneman's dismissal, with Durham adding 41 runs for the second wicket. An incredible day for Smith started with a string of maidens, with this pressure eventually forcing Borthwick to edge a rising delivery to Alviro Petersen in the gully at 47/2.
This much-needed breakthrough changed the complexion of the game when lunch arrived, although Durham were still firm favourites to complete victory at 97/2, with Jennings and Burnham already adding fifty runs by the time the interval came. The fifty-partnership came from the final ball of the morning session and the Durham duo showed no sign of relenting in the baking heat.
Spin had been introduced at an early stage on the final day, with Lancashire hoping for a similar outcome the last time they came to Southport. Unfortunately for the Red Rose, the spinners were not able to extract prodigious turn on a regular basis, with only the odd ball causing the batting side any trouble.
Smith, who would later give Lancashire a genuine chance of forcing victory, did drop two catches off Simon Kerrigan to remove Burnham either side of lunch, while Jennings progressed to fifty for the eighth time this season in 104 balls. Steven Croft brought himself into the attack to try and force a breakthrough, but Burnham ended the Lancashire skipper's first over with the first of two sixes to be hit by the 19-year-old on his way to a 129-ball half-century.
Durham continued to score freely after lunch, with Burnham smashing Kerrigan back over his head for another maximum, allowing the third-wicket partnership to add one-hundred runs in 204 balls. Having endured a frustrating day for no reward, Kerrigan (1-97) finally had his man, as a quicker delivery hit Burnham on the toe and he fell lbw for 52 to signal a devastating collapse from the visitors.
The introduction of Smith proved crucial for Lancashire, as Durham slipped from 170/2 to 195/7 in little more than 10 overs. At one stage Smith's figures read 5-16 from 12 overs, with his first breakthrough of a new spell accounting for the key man Jennings. The Durham opener skied an attempted pull shot, forcing Tom Moores to take a smart catch staring into the sun to remove Jennings for 82, the second wicket to fall in five balls.
Smith struck again in his next over to remove Michael Richardson (3), with Smith and Moores teaming up again with a tickle down the leg-side at 175/5. After taking three wickets for five runs in the space of 19 balls, Lancashire had managed to extract a route back into a game that ebbed and flowed since the start, but the key to securing victory would lie with the success or failure of two England all-rounders, past and present.
Veteran skipper Paul Collingwood (4) failed to make the most of being given a life by Croft after being dropped at short-leg when he was Smith's next victim, falling lbw at 183/6, but Stokes was determined to return to the Test side on a high, relieving the ensuing pressure by dispatching a half-tracker from Kerrigan out of the ground for six.
The Smith-Moores combination handed the Lancashire all-rounder his fifth and final wicket of the innings and a seventh five-wicket haul in his first-class career, as Paul Coughlin (5) forced a brilliant one-handed diving catch from Moores to leave the Red Rose needing three more wickets to win. With Lancashire in the ascendancy, tea certainly came at a good time for Durham, with the visitors needing 50 runs to win at the start of the final session of the match.
Stokes and Hickey were offered relative freedom, as they edged their way close to victory by picking up singles and rotating the strike. They did also look to finish with a flourish, as Hickey (21*) followed up two boundaries off Smith with a huge six off Jarvis, one that landed on the roof of the pavilion to take Durham within 18 runs of victory.
Not to be outdone, Stokes hit three sixes in quick succession during his innings of 36 from 43 balls, with Lancashire offering muted celebrations at his dismissal when he was run out at 243/8. Chris Rushworth completed the job by creaming Jarvis through the covers for a boundary, as Durham moved up to second in Division One by inflicting a second four-day defeat on Lancashire.
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