Mapping Mountains – Significant Name Changes – The Fours - The 400m Hills of England

Swarthy Top (NY 955 217)

There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill that is listed in the The Fours – The 400m Hills of England, with the summit height, col height and their locations, the drop and status of the hill derived from detail on contemporary maps produced from Ordnance Survey data and subsequent LIDAR analysis conducted by Myrddyn Phillips.

LIDAR image of Swarthy Top (NY 955 217)

The criteria for the list that this name change applies to are:

The Fours – The 400m Hills of England:  English hills at or above 400m and below 500m in height that have 30m minimum drop, accompanying the main list are three categories of sub hills, the 400m Sub-Fours, 390m Sub-Fours and the 390m Double Sub-Fours.   The list is co-authored by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams, with the 1^st edition of the booklet containing this list published by Europeaklist in December 2013 and by the Haroldstreet website in January 2014, with the 2^nd edition of the booklet containing this list published by Mapping Mountains Publications and by the Haroldstreet website on the 24^th April 2018.

The Fours - The 400m Hills of England by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams

The hill is adjoined to the the Cross Fell group of hills, which are situated in the northern Pennines, and it is positioned with the B6277 road to its north north-east and has a number of reservoirs close by, including the Grassholme, Selset, Balderhead, Blackton and Hury, and has the small community of Middleton-in-Teesdale towards the north.

When the listing that is now known as The Fours - The 400m Hills of England was originally compiled this hill appeared under the name of Millstone Grits, which is a prominent name that appears close to the summit on the contemporary Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map.  When the list was uploaded to the RHB Yahoo group file database the hill appeared under the name of Millstone Grits (Harker Hill).  Subsequently the name of the hill reverted to just Milstone Grits in the 1^st edition of The Fours when the list was published in booklet format by Europeaklist in December 2013. 

Extract from the Ordnance Survey 1:25000 Explorer map

Hill list authors are prone to list a hill by the name that appears nearest to its summit on contemporary Ordnance Survey maps, without much consideration for its local or historical confirmation, or whether map placement is appropriate.  In the case of this hill there are two names that are consistently applied near to its summit on different scaled Ordnance Survey maps.  These names are Swarthy Top and Millstone Grits, with the latter nearer the summit of this hill on contemporary maps and hence the previous listing under this name.

Since the original publication of this list on the RHB Yahoo Group file database there have been a number of Ordnance Survey maps made available online, some of these are historical such as the series of Six-Inch maps on the National Library of Scotland website, whilst others are current and digitally updated such as the Interactive Coverage Map hosted on the Geograph website.  Therefore, prior to the publication of the 2^nd edition of The Fours - The 400m Hills of England, the series of Six-Inch maps produced by Ordnance Survey were consulted.

For many years The Ordnance Survey Six-Inch map was the base map for information to be fed on to, the scale was superseded in the 1950s by the 1:10,000 series of maps and was available as sheets until the 1980s when they were digitised.  One of the recurring themes of Ordnance Survey maps is that data are not consistent between the different scales of maps, this is particularly noticeable for numerical data between the two publicly available scales of 1:50,000 Landranger and 1:25,000 Explorer maps.  However, when studying place-names it is also noticeable that name placement and occasionally composition are not consistent between these lower scaled maps and their larger scaled and older maps of the Six-Inch series.  It is also noticeable that some names appear on the Six-Inch map whilst they do not appear on the smaller scaled maps.  Extensive research has shown that place-name data and numerical data on the series of Six-Inch maps, and especially so for the placement of former, are more appropriate and accurate compared to information on contemporary maps.

Extract from the Ordnance Survey series of Six-Inch maps

Therefore, the name this hill is now listed by in The Fours - The 400m Hills of England is Swarthy Fell, and the placement of this name being applicable to the summit of this hill was derived from the Ordnance Survey series of Six-Inch maps, with this name also appearing on the contemporary Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map.  

The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Cross Fell

Name:  Swarthy Top

Previously Listed Name:  Millstone Grits 

OS 1:50,000 map:  91, 92

Summit Height:  411.1m (LIDAR)

Summit Grid Reference:  NY 95542 21755 (LIDAR)  

Col Height:  353.9m (LIDAR)

Col Grid Reference:  NY 92969 19846 (LIDAR)

Drop:  57.2m (LIDAR)

Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams (June 2018)