The History of Welsh Hill Lists – Part 1
The Early Years
1911-1940
1911 - John Rooke Corbett
No history of the hill lists of Wales
would be complete without due reverence to Sir Hugh Munro, who in 1891
published his first Tables of the 3000 foot mountains of Scotland. These consisted of 283 separate mountains
with a further 255 subsidiary tops.
Except for the minimum height criterion the list was arbitrary in nature
and blazed a trail for all hill lists that followed. Sir Hugh never quite completed his 538 tops;
he was working on a revision of his Tables when he died in 1919 with only three
tops remaining to visit.
Subsequent years saw the Rev. Archibald
Eneas Robertson become the first person to complete Sir Hugh’s 283 ‘Munros’,
when on the 28th September 1901 he reached the top of Meall Dearg on
the Aonach Eagach. The Rev. A.R.A. Burn
in 1923 not only repeated the Munros but also completed the subsidiary
tops. In 1929 J.A.Parker became the
third person to complete the Munros. Our
Welsh story now properly starts with John Rooke Corbett, Munroist number
four.
John Rooke Corbett was a district valuer
based in Bristol. He completed the
Munros and tops in 1930, only the second person to do so. As well as this, Corbett compiled a list of
219 Scottish mountains, between the heights of 2500 feet and 2999 feet, and
subsequently climbed them all. His
listing of ‘Corbetts’ had no specific written criterion for defining a
mountain, the Scottish Mountaineering Club (SMC) who the list was bequeathed
to, analysed it and decided that each mountain had to have a minimum re-ascent
of 500 feet on all sides. However,
subsequent detailed analysis of maps of the time by Robin N Campbell implies that Corbett was using
ten separate ring contours to denote one hill from another. The metric equivalent of the 500 feet
criterion would form the basis of a much later and important list
publication. With Corbett’s listing and
later publication the minimum height criterion used in a Scottish hill list had
been reduced from one of 3000 feet to one of 2500 feet. But Corbett had already used this minimum
height criterion in a published list in the 1911 Rucksack Club Journal
and thus the first published systematic listing of Welsh hills starts.
The Rucksack club was formed in October
1902 and its journal started in 1907.
Published on an annual basis, its 1911 edition had a five page article
entitled ‘Twenty-Fives’. These
Twenty-Fives were the 131 mountains above 2500 feet that Corbett had noted in
England and Wales.
After
an introductory page the listing starts with a brief description of each group,
followed by the mountain’s name, and in most, but not all cases, its
height. The last two pages relate to
Wales with the Berwyn as the first
group listed comprising Cader Fronwen
and Moel Sych. The next grouping, to the North of Ogwen Lake, consists of
fourteen peaks. Eleven mountains make up
the third grouping, between the Ogwen
and Llanberis passes. Snowdon
follows with four listed summits, whilst further West is the solitary peak of Moel Hebog. The Moelwyn
make up the next group with Moel Siabod
and Moelwyn listed. The following group ranges over an area that
includes Arenig Fawr, Aran Mawddwy and Cader Idris; Cowarch is
noted in this group as the only one that cannot be reached in an easy day from
either Llanuwchllyn or Dolgelly. Corbett’s last group is to the great ridge of
old red sandstone that separates Brecknockshire
from Glamorgan and comprises nine
summits. In all, 51 Welsh mountains are
listed. Corbett ends with a remark
concerning Plynlimmon, which he
states: “Has been described by writers who should know better as the third
highest mountain in Wales, [this] only reaches 2,468 feet above sea level”.
With this article Corbett had set the
precedent that many a subsequent list compiler would follow by incorporating
the hills of England and Wales in one publication. It also seems that the accepted spelling of
hill names has altered in the years between this list’s publication and the
writing of this article. Corbett’s
reasoning for producing the list was based upon the peak-bagging exploits of
the then president of the Rucksack Club, Philip S. Minor. Corbett goes on to explain that: “Minor was
the first to take up the idea of ascending every mountaintop in England and
Wales over 2500 feet”. Because of this,
members of the Rucksack Club scrutinised reputable maps of the time, such as
Bartholomew’s or the one-inch Ordnance map, and if any point was above the 2500
foot contour line and was marked, it went on the list. This of course was only done as Minor was
approaching the completion of his task, so he could at least do it
properly. Although the exact date is
unknown, Philip S. Minor became the first person to complete the Twenty-Fives
when he finished Corbett’s list in 1911 or 1912.
.jpg) |
| An excerpt from the introduction to John Rooke Corbett's 'Twenty-Fives' |
Although Corbett’s Twenty-Fives is
accepted as the first systematic listing of Welsh hills to be published, it
certainly wasn’t the first published listing.
During the Victorian age, hills with their respective heights were
sometimes divided into groups and occasionally appeared in published
format. Harry Longuville Jones’s
‘Illustrations of the natural scenery of the Snowdonian mountains, accompanied
by a description, topographical and historical of the county of Caernarvon’ is
but one example. Charles Tilt of London
and Thomas Stevenson of Cambridge published this in 1829. It included hills, with their heights,
arranged in six divisions of mountains.
But detailed listings with a set criterion for defining a mountain only
arrived in Wales with John Rooke Corbett’s 1911 publication. It was only a year later when after thorough
and exhaustive examination of the map of England and Wales, that an update to
the ‘Twenty Fives’ appeared.
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