Mapping Mountains – Significant Name Changes – Y Trichant - The 300m Hills of Wales

Cefn Uchaf (SN 958 800)

There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill that is listed in the Y Trichant - The 300m Hills of Wales.  With the numerical details relating to this hill prompted by a Trimble GeoXH 6000 survey conducted on the 14^th December 2014 and confirmed by subsequent LIDAR analysis.

The criteria for the list that this name change affects are:

Y Trichant - The 300m Hills of Wales - These are the Welsh hills at and above 300m and below 400m in height that have 30m minimum drop,  with an accompanying sub category entitled the Sub-Trichant with these being all Welsh hills at and above 300m and below 400m in height that have 20m and more and below 30m of drop, with the introduction to the re-naming and the publication history of this list appearing on Mapping Mountains on the 13^th May 2017.

The hill is positioned in the Pegwn Mawr group, which is a range of hills in the north-eastern part of mid and west Wales, and is situated between the small communities of Llangurig to the west, Tylwch to the east and Cwmbelan to the north-west, with the Afon Dulas in the valley below to the hill’s north-east.

The Trimble GeoXH 6000 gathering data on the summit area of Cefn Uchaf

The hill appeared in the Sub List that accompanied the 300m P30 list on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website and its status as a Sub-Trichant was confirmed by the survey with the Trimble GeoXH 6000.  The hill appeared in this Sub List under an invented name of Bryn Nant Cae-garw, with an accompanying note stating; Name from stream to the South.  During my early hill listing I thought it appropriate to invent a name for a hill if no name seemed to appear for it on Ordnance Survey maps of the day.  My preference was to use farm names and put Pen, Bryn or Moel in front of them, in this instance I used a name of a stream.  This is not a practice that I now advocate as with research either conducted locally or historically an appropriate name for the hill can usually be found.

Bryn Nant Cae-garw

350c

SN959801

136

214

Two points of same height. Name from stream to the South

The name this hill is now listed by is Cefn Uchaf and this was derived from the Tithe map.  The term Tithe map is generally given to a map of a Welsh or English parish or township and which was prepared after the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act.  This act allowed tithes to be paid in cash rather than goods.  The Tithe maps gave names of owners and occupiers of land in each parish and importantly for place-name research they also included the name of enclosed land.  This enclosed land is usually based on a field system, however not every field is given a name, but many are and especially so in Wales.

Accessing information on the Tithe map is simplified by the use of a split screen enabling the summit to be pinpointed on the map on the right and for the same point to appear on the Tithe map on the left

The land where the summit of this hill is situated is named as Cefn ucha on the Tithe map

The enclosed land where the summit of Cefn Uchaf  is situated is given the number 84 on the Tithe map, this can be cross referenced against the apportionments; it is these apportionments that give the name of the owner or occupier of the land as well as the name of the land.  The land where the summit of this hill is situated is named Cefn ucha (Cefn Uchaf conforming to standard modern Welsh) on the Tithe map and it appears in the county named as Montgomery and in the parish of Llangurig.

The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Hirddywel

Name:  Cefn Uchaf

Previously Listed Name:  Bryn Nant Cae-garw

 

Summit Height:  357.7m (LIDAR)

OS 1:50,000 map:  136

Summit Grid Reference:  SN 95819 80021 (LIDAR)

  

Drop:  28.4m (LIDAR)

For details on the survey of Cefn Uchaf

Myrddyn Phillips (July 2016)