The Fours: A New English Hill List
The underfoot conditions of the Pennine
moors can sometimes become a wet sponge-like trudge, and on one particular day
earlier this year the rain and wind had turned the upper slopes of Meldon Hill
into an unwelcoming landscape of bleakness. However, we were there for a
reason. Mark, a good hill-walking friend of mine and the editor of Europeaklist
(https://sites.google.com/site/europeaklist/),
a website that specialises in the listing of European hills and mountains, was
quickly approaching the completion of the English Hewitts. We had also
hoped to film an introductory promotional video to a new listing of Welsh 400m
hills, known as ‘Y Pedwarau’,
that was nearing publication. On our descent, we sought shelter from the
worsening weather in a rather forlorn looking barn, and upon completing the
filming we approached the subject of an equivalent listing of English 400m
hills. I’m not too sure if it was the rush to get back to the welcome
solace of the awaiting car at Cow Green Reservoir, but I was easily tempted by
the prospect of this new English list that we had already named ‘The Fours’. Little did I
know that it would take over six months work by all involved until ‘The Fours’ was due to be published.
Also present on the ‘wet trudge’ up Meldon Hill was Aled Williams, who I’d been working with for a number of years on Welsh upland place-name research. Aled had done a tremendous amount of work on ‘Y Pedwarau’ and was enthused to research the names of Celtic origin found in the Shropshire border-lands and in the south-west of England, where many of ‘The Fours’ are situated. With me compiling the list, Aled assessing many of the names for appropriate use and composition, and Mark as both publisher and editor, we now set about this latest task.
Myrddyn
Phillips: List Compiler
Over the last thirteen years or so I had
compiled many hill lists, the majority of them being of hills in Wales. I
know the higher Welsh hills intimately having walked upon them many
times. However, I cannot lay the same claim toward the English hills, and
because of this I felt I was at a disadvantage, as having actual knowledge of
the land that is portrayed on a map can help in assessing the numerical
qualification of each hill when hill-list compiling.
The qualification used to separate one
hill from another is a minimum of 30m of drop; also referred to as ‘re-ascent’
or ‘prominence’. This is the vertical height gain from the col to the
summit. This prominence qualification matched that used in the equivalent
Welsh list, as well as that used in other established lists such as the English
Hewitts (2,000ft as minimum height) and the English Deweys (500m minimum
height).
When compiling ‘Y Pedwarau’ we had realised that these 400m hills
form the lower tier of the Welsh uplands, and this is also true for ‘The Fours’. Therefore,
anyone contemplating visiting all the upland hills of England will want to
visit these 400m hills and join them up with their higher neighbours. A
full completion of these three listings would be a very considerable
undertaking, but would give the person an intimate knowledge of all the upland
areas of England.
We’d already decided upon the
self-explanatory title of ‘The
Fours’ as it lists the 400m
hills of England and compliments the translated version of its sister volume ‘Y Pedwarau’. The choice of
title was easy, but the thought of scrutinising so many maps of a country that
I did not know so well was somewhat daunting. As the published booklet
would list the hills from north to south, I began by studying the Cheviot
hills. It took time to develop a rigorous routine, but once a system was
set in place where each and every ring contour between 390m – 499m was checked,
I soon realised that, although the prospect of listing all these ‘Fours’
was indeed daunting, it was a task that was achievable. However, I still
couldn’t predict how long it would take. The entire list proved quite an
undertaking to compile, as there are 296 hills in the main list, with another
225 hills in three sub-lists. With over 520 hills listed, this is the
first comprehensive listing to English 400 hills that take in accompanying
sub-hills.
Nowadays online mapping provides a wealth
of Ordnance Survey height details, from some of the early 1:2,500 and 1:10,560
maps, through to the Popular and Seventh Series One-Inch maps, the Historical
1:25,000 maps and right up to the latest large-scale digital maps. All
were looked at and checked, with the older maps proving invaluable as they give
many heights that were attained via levelling, which is a process more accurate
than photogrammetry - responsible for the beige coloured spot heights on
current Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 maps. However, the map that proved the
most valuable to study was the latest large-scale digital map where many spot
heights are shown that do not appear on any other map. Many times the
study of these maps was like fitting a jigsaw puzzle together, and although the
whole process was incredibly laborious, it was also very fulfilling. The
accuracy of the list is also enhanced from the surveys conducted for absolute
height by G&J Surveys. As a member of this surveying team I knew that
the differential GPS equipment used is the best of its kind for height readings.
Although not knowing the land of ‘The
Fours’ intimately, I had visited some of the hills. Many of them can be
excellent walks on their own, such as the ruggedness of The Tower (SK 141 914)
and the shapely profile of Chrome Hill (SK 070 673) in the Peak District. Many
of the ‘The Fours’ can be
combined with higher neighbouring peaks in extended ridge walks, such as over
the North York Moors, Malvern Hills and Exmoor. All the major hill ranges
in England are represented in ‘The Fours’, from the Cheviot hills and
North York Moors in the north of England, down through the spine of the country
taking in the Pennines, Lakes, Dales and Peak to the less frequented areas of
the Shropshire uplands and lastly to Exmoor, Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor in the
south-west.
 |
| Linghaw (SD 637 985) in the Howgill Fells. Photo: Mark Trengove. |
Aled
Williams: Hill-Name Research
During the first half of 2013, I began
work on analysing and compiling hill names for what would become ‘Y Pedwarau’.
I had been in collaboration with Myrddyn for a number of years, working on a
project to record and document upland place-names in Wales. To date, we
have spoken to over 700 people who possess at least some intimate knowledge of
an upland region. This research has taken me to all corners of Wales and,
most significantly for the focus of this article, to some of the English border
counties. It is hoped that the bulk of this work can be published in the
future.
 |
| Caer Caradoc Hill (SO 477 953) one of The Fours that are situated in Shropshire. Photo: Mark Trengove. |
The labour involved in sourcing and
confirming hill names is considerable, and part of such research can also be
achieved through the study of historical documents. For ‘The Fours’, each hill that I
investigated was analysed thoroughly and within the limits of the information
available to me. Crucially, names involving a degree of uncertainty in
geographical placement were not used, and such hills were listed using the
‘Point (Height)’ notation, following the standard practice employed in European
peak listing. This meticulousness was also extended to the hill areas of
the south-west of England, where research into old documents such as ‘A Description of the Part of
Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy’ by A. E. Bray (1836)
confirmed the validity of names such as Swell Tor (SX 559 733).
Hill names represent snapshots of human interactions with the hills themselves, and describe the character or history of an eminence at a certain point in time or within a particular timescale. Such riches are important to treasure and unique to ‘The Fours’ are names that have never been recorded on any document or map. We hope that the hill-name details found within ‘The Fours’ will be of benefit.
This attention to detail to both the
numerical and names aspects of the list was encouraged by our editor, Mark,
whose guidance Myrddyn and I followed throughout the publication process.
Mark
Trengove: Publisher and Editor
 |
| Chrome Hill (SK 070 673) in the Peak District. Photo: Mark Trengove. |
The publication of ‘The Fours’
will join a select number of listings of the hills of the British Isles that
Europeaklist have published. These include the ‘Majors’, the 600m
prominence hills of Britain and Ireland, as well as a complimentary series of
booklets to the ‘High Hills of the Irish Republic’ and the ‘High
Hills of Wales’ and of course, the aforementioned ‘Y Pedwarau’.
The Europeaklist website has been in
existence for over five years and, as the name of the website suggests, I
specialise in listings of European mountains and hills. These can be as
diverse as hills in The Netherlands or The Baltic States to the alpine mountains
of Austria, France and Germany. However, I am always interested in
listings of the British hills and, especially, for those that are based on a
prominence criterion. The Europeaklist philosophy is to produce quality
listings that are free of charge to access and download.
One aspect of this publication is the
comprehensive notes section towards the end of the booklet, where over 330
separate comments can be cross referenced against the respective hill within
the list. Many of these notes refer to the height and drop of the hill,
where the information came from old maps, or to the surveys conducted by
G&J Surveys. Aled’s hill-name research is also represented in the
notes section, where sources and alternative names are briefly discussed.
Interspersed throughout the booklet are
photographs of some of the hills listed, and as Europeaklist self-publishes, we
can update ‘The Fours’ with additional information when
needed.
The English 400m hills, ”The Fours”, comprise wild, little frequented moorland
that is mountainous in nature, and we know that for those accessing ‘The Fours’ booklet, the listing will take the
hill-walker to some beautiful uplands in England. ‘The Fours’ booklet is
available from Europeaklist. It
can be downloaded free of charge and is available as a print-booklet and
e-booklet:
About the authors:
Myrddyn Phillips:
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Aled Williams:
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Aled is a research scientist by profession and has a PhD in
physical chemistry. He has
over 10 years of hill-walking experience and has completed a round of the Welsh
2,000ft mountains and subsidiary tops, and is currently almost three-quarters
of the way to finishing the English equivalent. He is also interested in natural
history and especially enjoys studying the arctic-alpine flora of the Welsh
mountains. Aled is
currently in the process of cataloguing the place names associated with the
uplands of his native country. The
project represents a considerable undertaking and will take many years to
complete. Aled hopes that
this research can be published in a series of books at some point in the future.
Mark
Trengove:
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Mark is a civil servant specialising in tax. Born near London, he has made Wales his home for over fifteen years. He began hill-walking quite late in life (aged 39), and has now been heading for the hills for the last sixteen years. Apart from his beloved Wales, he heads when he can to the Scottish Highlands, Southern Uplands, Lake District and Pennines. He is also a keen mountain walker in the uplands of Poland. A member of the Marilyn Hall of Fame and Welsh and English Hewitt completer, Mark is also the first known person to complete the Welsh Hewitts, Sub-Hewitts, Marilyns and Sub-Marilyns on the same day. Apart from hill-walking and listing, Mark is a keen genealogist and enthusiast for music of the Baroque and Classical Periods.
‘The Fours’ is available as an e-booklet version and a print-booklet version with or without accompanying photographs on the Europeaklist website.
'The Fours' is also available for GPS Waypoints, Google mapping and on-line hill bagging tick lists on the Haroldstreet website.
The Fours: http://www.haroldstreet.org.uk/waypoints/download/400s/?list=fours
Sub-Fours: http://www.haroldstreet.org.uk/waypoints/download/400s/?list=subfours
Double Sub-Fours: http://www.haroldstreet.org.uk/waypoints/download/400s/?list=double-subfours
Please click http://www.ukhillwalking.com/articles/page.php?id=6004 to see the original article published on the UKHillwalking website.
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