Mapping Mountains – Significant Name Changes – 100m Twmpau and Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales

Cefn Cribwr (SS 883 829)

There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill that is listed in the 100m Twmpau and Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales, with the summit height, bwlch height and their locations, the drop and status of the hill confirmed by LIDAR analysis conducted by Myrddyn Phillips.

LIDAR image of Cefn Cribwr

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

100m Twmpau - Welsh hills at or above 100m and below 200m in height with 30m minimum drop, with an accompanying sub list entitled the 100m Sub-Twmpau with the criteria for this sub category being all Welsh hills at or above 100m and below 200m in height with 20m or more and below 30m of drop, with the word Twmpau being an acronym standing for thirty welsh metre prominences and upward.

Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales - Welsh P30 hills whose prominence  equal or exceed half that of their absolute height.  With the criteria for Lesser Dominant status being those additional Welsh P30 hills whose prominence is between one third and half that of their absolute height, with the Introduction to the Mapping Mountains publication of this list appearing on the 3^rd December 2015.

The hill is adjoined to the Cymoedd Morgannwg group of hills, which are situated in the central part of South Wales (Region C, Sub-Region C2), and it is encircled by roads with a minor road to its south and east, the M4 further to its south and the Tycribwr Hill B4281 to its west north-west, and has the town of Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr (Bridgend) towards its south-east.

This hill was first listed in the original Welsh 100m P30 list published on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website, under the name of Tycribwr Hill, which is a name that is positioned following a road to the west north-west of this hill’s summit on contemporary Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer maps of the day.

Tycribwr Hill

134m

SS883829

170

151

During my early hill listing I paid little regard to name placement on the map, or the meaning of names and to what feature the name was appropriately applied to.  Therefore I prioritised names for listing purposes that I now understand are either inappropriate or where another name is viewed as being more appropriate, and as the name of Tycribwr Hill seems to apply to a part of the B4281 road that heads south-west from Tycribwr farm and as such is not the name of the hill, I therefore wanted to substantiate that the name of Cefn Cribwr had been applied to this hill and not just the small community by the same name that is positioned on its ridge crest.

Extract from the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map

Since publication of these P30 lists on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website there have been a number of Ordnance Survey maps made available online, some of these are historic 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 Vector Map Local hosted on the Geograph website and which is named the Interactive Coverage Map.  One of the historic maps now available is the Ordnance Survey One-Inch ‘Old Series’ map which formed the basis for the change in this hill’s listed name.

The One-Inch ‘Old Series’ map was the first map that the Ordnance Survey produced, and their publication culminated from the whole of Britain being surveyed between 1791 and 1874 and the detail gathered therein produced at a scale of one inch to the mile and published in sheet format between 1805 and 1874.  The One-Inch ‘Old Series’ maps for the whole of Wales are now available online; they are also available in map format as enlarged and re-projected versions to match the scale and dimensions of the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger series and are published by Cassini.  This series of maps form another important part in the study of Welsh upland place-names and bridge the timeframe leading up to the production of the Ordnance Survey base map of the Six-Inch series, and importantly for this hill and its listed name, it is this map that shows the extended Cefn Cribwr takes in land comprising the extended ridge that this hill is a part of and not just the small community situated on its ridge crest.

Extract from the Ordnance Survey One-Inch 'Old Series' map

Therefore, the name this hill is now listed by in the 100m Twmpau and Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales is Cefn Cribwr, and this was derived from the Ordnance Survey One-Inch ‘Old Series’ map.

The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Cymoedd Morgannwg

Name:  Cefn Cribwr

Previously Listed Name:  Tycribwr Hill 

OS 1:50,000 map:  170

Summit Height:  133.8m (LIDAR)

Summit Grid Reference:  SS 88331 82914 (LIDAR)

Bwlch Height:  75.7m (LIDAR)

Bwlch Grid Reference:  SS 86323 83463 (LIDAR)

 

Drop:  58.2m (LIDAR)

Dominance:  43.47% (LIDAR)

Myrddyn Phillips (May 2019)