28.10.18 Yr Arwydd (SH 388 824)
By the time I had driven
to the small community of Carmel the morning’s blue sky had an imposter quickly
edging in from the north as a large shower cloud pushed inland. But as the summit of this hill is only a
minute or so from the convenience of a road I hoped that assessing the lay of
land and conducting the Trimble survey could be finished before any heavy
downpour materialised.
Having parked my car
adjacent to the Church I walked down the road to the intersecting B road and a
few steps later was at the gate which gave access to the grazing field where
the summit of Yr Arwydd is positioned.
This hill has a trig
pillar close to its high point and a mound of grassed earthen rubble near it,
and a pool just below it. However, the
recognised summit of the hill is a short distance between the trig pillar and
the houses of Carmel and consists of a small grassy rise.
I soon positioned the
Trimble on top of my rucksack with its internal antenna aligned to the high
point of the hill, with the rucksack acting as an improvised tripod to give the
Trimble elevation above its immediate surrounds, and with the offset between
its internal antenna and the ground below measured and noted I waited until the
0.1m accuracy level was attained before data should be logged.
Gathering data at the summit of Yr Arwydd |
Once the Trimble was
beeping away collecting its individual datum points I headed to the trig pillar
and took a number of photos with the shower cloud now looming toward Carmel and
a rainbow cast across the sky.
View from the summit of Yr Arwydd |
Looking from the trig pillar to the Trimble set-up position at the summit of Yr Arwydd |
As the last of the 300
datum points were being gathered and stored the first wind-blown rain drops
sped across the land, I hoped that the rain would not develop in to anything
heavier, thankfully it didn’t and its appearance added variety to an otherwise
blissful blue skied morning.
Once I’d packed the
Trimble away I headed back to my car and asked a man who was working on the
adjacent house if he was local and explained my interest in the name of the
hill. He said that I should visit the
woman at the bungalow just up the road as the field where the summit of the
hill is situated is a part of her farm.
The woman’s name was Medwen Roberts.
Prior to my visit I’d
looked at the Tithe map and the field where the summit of this hill is situated
is named Yr Arwydd at the time of the Tithe.
I walked up the road to the bungalow and knocked on the door, Medwen
Roberts answered and we chatted about her field, and she told me that she’d
lived here for 60 years with her husband and that the name of the field is Yr
Arwydd.
Medwen Roberts |
Many field names change
over the course of time, and those given on the Tithe map are the ones that
were known at the time that the Tithe was documented, however there are many
field names that remain the same, with their name passed down from one
generation to the next, this is usually done orally rather than in the written
form, which is traditional amongst the farming community in much of Wales.
This hill was first
listed as Bryn Carmel in the original Welsh P30 lists, this name was an
invention on my part and one that sounds rather clunky to say the least, this
invented name is still used in the Tumps with the collator of that list having
duplicated the Anglesey section that I originated, unfortunately the Tump
collator did not credit me for this and put his own name to my work. It is good to finally list this hill by an
appropriate name; after that for the field where its summit is situated, with
this name given on the Tithe and substantiated from local enquiry with Medwen
Roberts.
Survey Result:
Yr Arwydd (significant name change)
Summit Height: 116.9m (converted to OSGM15, Trimble GeoXH 6000)
Summit Grid Reference: SH 38800 82447 (Trimble GeoXH 6000)
Bwlch Height: c 79m (interpolation)
Bwlch Grid Reference: SH 40939 83373 (interpolation)
Drop: c 38m (Trimble GeoXH 6000 summit and interpolated bwlch)
Dominance: 32.42% (Trimble GeoXH 6000 summit and interpolated bwlch)
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