Introduction
If readers
would like to contribute an article for the Guest Contributor page heading
please contact me, my email address appears on the About Me page heading. The 0nly two things I ask is that the
article should be hill related and importantly I should not end up in court
through its publication! Otherwise the choice of subject matter is down to the
Guest Contributor.
About
the Author; Ronnie Bowron
Ronnie Bowron developed a
passion for the mountains through Scouting where as a Cub Scout over the Easter
weekend in 1976 he visited the Lake District for the first time. Since then he has walked extensively around
the UK, with various trips to the Alps and Himalaya.
Ten years ago he decided to
have greater objectives to walking the fells and subsequently completed the
Wainwrights and then the Outlying Fells, Birketts, Nuttalls and Simms of England and Wales. Having completed a round of English and Welsh
mountains he then refocused on the Lake District completing the Synges.
His current projects revolve
around documenting all recognised hills/ mountains from any bagging list in
each of the UK’s 15 National Parks. He
calls these “The Definitive Lists©” of the National Parks of the United
Kingdom. In the last 12 months he has
completed rounds of all 1,020 summits in the Lake District National Park and
all 187 summits within the Yorkshire Dales National Park. His attention then turned to documenting all
English/ Welsh Mountains over 2,000 feet / 600 metres on the same basis as his
Definitive Lists, hence the research on the Corbett Twenty Fives and The Two
Thousand Footers of England by W T Elmslie.
The Two
Thousand Footers of England by W T Elmslie
One of the most popular hill bagging lists in the UK is the compilation of all the 2,000 foot mountains in England and Wales. Most people nowadays will complete a round of this challenge by using either the Nuttalls or the Hewitts list although the Long Distance Walkers Association Hill Walkers Register 1 accepts completion of any of the following lists: -
SIMPSON: Concerning Contours by F.H.F. Simpson
(list of the 2000 foot mountains of the Lake District). Wayfarers' Journal
(1937), pp 18-24.
MOSS: The
Two-Thousands of England (excluding the Lake District) by E. Moss. Rucksack Club Journal (1939) pages 184-189;
and The Two Thousands of Wales by E. Moss. Rucksack Club Journal (1940) pp
239-243.
BRIDGE: The
Mountains of England and Wales by George Bridge. Gastons/West Col (1973).
WRIGHT: English Mountain Summits by Nick
Wright. Robert Hale (1974).
BUXTON & LEWIS: The Mountain Summits of England and
Wales by Chris Buxton and Gwyn Lewis. Red Dial Publications (1986).
NUTTALLS: The Mountains of England and Wales. Volume
1: Wales (1989) and The Mountains of England and Wales. Volume 2: England
(1990). Both volumes by John and Anne Nuttall.
Cicerone Press.
DAWSON: The
Relative Hills of Britain by Alan Dawson.
Cicerone Press (1992).
DEWEY: Mountain Tables by Michael
Dewey. Chapter 1. Constable (1995).
DAWSON: The
Hewitts and Marilyns of Wales by Alan Dawson.
TACit Press (1997).
DAWSON: The
Hewitts and Marilyns of England by Alan Dawson.
TACit Press (1997).
Conspicuous by its absence from the LDWA Register 1 is the first recorded list of English 2,000 footers by W T Elmslie in 1933. Ahead of describing this list in greater detail it is worth putting it into its historical context.
Most people will be familiar
with the Munro list of 283 Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet first published
in 1891 by Sir Hugh Munro and a round was first completed by the Rev. Archibald
Eneas Robertson on 28th September 1901.
What is less well known is that
J R Corbett (the fourth Munroist) published an English and Welsh list of mountains
over 2,500 feet known as the Twenty
Fives in 1911. This is the first known list of English and Welsh summits.
Therefore during the early part
of the twentieth century the hill bagging options were Scotland – The Munros and
for those unable to get to Scotland for geographic reasons, England and Wales –
The Twenty Fives.
This period lasted over 20
years until W T Elmslie published the first list of English mountains over
2,000 feet in an article in the Journal
of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club of the English Lake District in 1933.
In this article Elmslie listed
347 points in England of two thousand feet and over using the following
criteria: -
1. A
height marked on the map by a cairn, above the two thousand foot contour, must
be included
2. A point
marked on the map, with a height figure of two thousand foot or more, must be
included, whether a cairn was marked or not.
3. Any
point which was shown by the contours to rise above the two thousand foot line
must be included, whether or not a cairn was marked or a definite height given.
4. Any
point shown by the contours to be a summit, should also be included.
It should be noted that in
identifying points under the criteria above Elmslie used Bartholomew Half-Inch
Contour maps which had contours at 250 foot intervals. Also an important point to note is that these
maps pre dated trig points which only came into being in April 1936. A number of the spot heights on these maps
were not true summits but cairned points with excellent views to allow the
Ordnance Surveyors to complete their work.
These random spot heights are largely still recorded on the 2018 editions
of the OS 1:50,000 mapping.
The result of this mapping
research and site visits was a list of 347 points over two thousand foot.
Elmslie acknowledged the
limitations of the mapping of the day with the following quote: -
“These rules do not quite meet
the case. On the one hand they include
several points which are not true summits at all, notably Red Tarn on
Helvellyn(!), two passes at the head of Weardale, and a number of cairned points
in the Pennines not on the top of any hill….From these must be subtracted an
uncertain number of points which are not true summits: -
Lakes…………………………………………………..1
Passes………………………………………………….2 or
3
Cairns…………………………………………………..20-50”
It is unfortunate that Elmslie
in compiling the list and supporting commentary was not precise in the number
of non-summits (even the 2-3 Passes which should have been obvious!) nor did he
annotate those points he believed to be non-summits in the actual list.
This left my research with a
major dilemma, how to identify the true summits from the non-summits.
Therefore I had to devise my
own criteria to arrive at an Elmslie summit list. This may be subjective and open to challenge/
debate but this is the criteria I used to asses all 347 points: -
· The point is within 200 metres of a current
recognised summit from any hill bagging list to allow for minor summit
relocations and greater accuracy of current mapping.
· The point fell within a full contour ring on
Imperial 50 foot contour maps or a full contour ring on current metric mapping.
· The point remains a named position and spot
height on current metric mapping.
The criterion of fifty foot
contours is particularly relevant to determine the summit/non summit spilt. As mentioned earlier, Elmslie was using
Bartholomew maps with 250 foot intervals so he would have needed personal site
visits to determine a summit location. Fifty
foot contour mapping came in later in the 1930’s, with a single fifty foot
contour ring being used by both Simpson 1937 and Moss 1939 and 1940 as the key
criterion for determining a summit.
To illustrate the point it is worth
reviewing an example: -
Langdon Fell in the Teesdale to
Weardale area was listed as follows: -
Langdon Fell………..2079
Langdon Fell………..2056
Langdon Fell………..2042
These are points either side of
Harthope Moss pass, which is the joint highest paved pass in England at 2,057
feet, the other being Killhope Cross.
The map on the left is the
Bartholomew mapping used by Elmslie and the map on the right is the first OS
mapping with fifty foot contours.
Point 2079 is therefore cast as
a summit with the contour ring.
Point 2056 is one of the passes
in Elmslie’s list.
Point 2042 no longer exists,
nor is it a summit merely a good sighting point over Teesdale no doubt used by
OS Surveyors in their mapping work.
By reviewing all 347 points by
the above criteria the following is revealed: -
Summits
|
305
|
Non Summits
|
38
|
Lakes – Red Tarn
|
1
|
Passes – Langdon Fell 2056, Rake End Anon pt. 2026 and "Road
Summit" 2056
|
3
|
The Non Summits now fall within
Elmslie’s range of 20-50 although this is still not perfect. Within the Non Summit list are eight summits
that only appear because they are also in the Del Corbett Twenty Five List. To recap, Corbett did a major revamp of his
Twenty Fives List in 1929 deleting 15 Non Summits following a change to OS
mapping and personal visits. I have left
these in the Elmslie list on the basis that for approaching two decades they
were part of THE bagging list for England and Wales the Twenty Fives. I accept there is an equally valid argument
for these points to sit on the Elmslie Non Summit list.
The points in question are: -
Black Dub
|
NY 70110 34926
|
Cross Fell pt. 2799
|
NY 69474 34711
|
Cross Fell pt. 2893
|
NY 68966 34590
|
Fallow Hill
|
NY 70187 35447
|
Knock Fell pt 2532
|
NY 73231 30132
|
Mickle Fell pt 2547
|
NY 80136 24182
|
Skirwith Fell
|
NY 67937 35408
|
The Cheviot pt. 2547
|
NT 89890 20730
|
Having visited all these points
the argument remains inconclusive; one could regard Fallow Hill, Mickle Fell pt
2547 and Skirwith Fell as separate summits albeit on the end of ridge lines
whereas the rest are pretty meaningless from a prominence perspective.
There is an interesting
challenge that Elmslie set himself in visiting these points and that was to
discover whether there is any point in England from which both the North Sea
and the Irish Sea are visible. He
believed that he may have seen the Solway and definitely the North Sea from
Windygate Hill in the Cheviots. He also
speculated on Cold Fell and summits around the head of Wensleydale as further
possibilities. Does anyone know the
answer to this challenge?
Elmslie himself completed a
round of his list with an ascent of High Willhays on 20th October
1933.
Ronnie Bowron (October 2018)
Very interesting, thanks.
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