Foel Las (SH 886 686)
There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill
that is listed in the Y Trichant,
with the summit height, bwlch height and their locations, the drop and status
of the hill confirmed by a Trimble GeoXH 6000 survey conducted by Myrddyn
Phillips on the 5th April 2016, and latterly substantiated by LIDAR
analysis.
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| LIDAR image of the two Foel Las summits at SH 886 686 and SH 894 687 |
The criteria for the list that this name change applies to are:
Y Trichant – Welsh hills at or above 300m and below 400m in
height that have 30m minimum drop, with an accompanying sub list entitled the Sub-Trichant with the criteria for this sub category being all
Welsh hills at or above 300m and below 400m in height with 20m or more and
below 30m of drop. The list is authored by Myrddyn Phillips, with the
Introduction to the list and the renaming of it appearing on Mapping Mountains
on the 13th May 2017.
The hill is adjoined to the Mynydd
Hiraethog group of hills, which are situated in the central northern part of
North Wales (Region A, Sub-Region A2), and it is positioned with the A548 road
and the Afon Elwy to its north and west, the B5382 road to its south and a
minor road to its east, and has the small community of Llangernyw to the south-west
and Llanfair Talhaiarn towards the east north-east.
The hill appeared in the
original Welsh 300m P30 list on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website under the directional
name of Tre-pys-llygod West Top, with
an accompanying note stating; Name from hill
to the East.
Tre-pys-llygod West Top
|
308m
|
116
|
17
|
Name from hill to the East
|
During my early hill listing I thought it appropriate to either invent a name for a hill, or use a name that appeared near to the summit of the hill on Ordnance Survey maps of the day. My preference was to use farm names and put Pen, Bryn or Moel in front of them or as in this instance use a directional name based on supplanting the name adjoined to the hill to the east and adding a directional component to it. This is not a practice that I now advocate as with time and inclination place-name data can be improved either by asking local people or by examining historic documents, through this form of research an appropriate name for the hill can usually be found.
As a variety of Ordnance
Survey maps place the name Tre Pys Llygod applicable to the land mass taking in
this and its adjacent higher easterly hill, I wanted to follow the history of
this hill’s recorded name to see if another was more appropriate.
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| Extract from the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger map |
As the summit of this hill comprises bounded land the details for it were examined on 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.
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| Extract from the Tithe map |
The enclosed land where the summit of this hill is situated is given the number 633 on the 1842 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 as Ffridd foelas in the apportionments, with the details on the Tithe map appearing in the parish of Llanfair Talhaiarn in the county named as Denbigh.
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| Extract from the apportionments |
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 Draft Surveyors map which formed the basis for the first publicly available Ordnance Survey One-Inch ‘Old Series’ map, and it is the Draft Surveyors map that I next examined.
The Draft Surveyors maps
consist of the preliminary drawings made by the Ordnance Surveyor’s surveyors
between the 1780s and 1840 and formed the basis for the first publicly
available One-Inch map. They were drawn
at scales of six inches to the mile for areas considered of particular military
significance and down to two inches to the mile for other areas. Fair copies were then produced from these
preliminary drawings to one inch to the mile and then copper plates were
prepared for printing. The Draft
Surveyors maps for the whole of Wales are now available online and they form an
important part in the study of Welsh upland place-names as they bridge the time
frame between the late 18th century and the mid-19th
century when the Ordnance Survey produced their first One-Inch maps, and
importantly for this hill and its listed name, this map records the name for
this and its higher easterly hill as Y Foelas.
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| Extract from the Ordnance Survey Draft Surveyors map |
The next map to examine was the One-Inch ‘Old Series,’ this was the first map that Ordnance Survey published, and they were based on the proceeding Draft Surveyors map. 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 forms another important part in the study of Welsh upland place-names and bridge the time frame leading to the production of the Ordnance Survey base map of the Six-Inch series. It is this map that first paces the name of Tre-pys-llygod against these hills, with the name of Y Foel las also placed adjacent to the lower westerly hill.
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| Extract from the Ordnance Survey One-Inch 'Old Series' map |
Finally the series of Ordnance Survey Six-Inch maps were examined and the name of Tre-pŷs-llygod is recorded in large letters, with the name of Foel-lâs being recorded adjacent to the westerly of the two hills next to what looks like a small-holding.
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| Extract from the series of Ordnance Survey Six-Inch maps |
The detail on the Six-Inch map and the use of the term Ffridd on the Tithe map implies that the small-holding existed and it was named Foel Las and the enclosed land taking in the summits of these two hills was a part of their ffridd and this was known as Ffridd Foel Las, with the name of Tre Pys Llygod being a later addition.
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| The Trimble GeoXH 6000 gathering data at the summit of Foel Las (SH 886 686) |
Therefore, the name this hill is now listed by in the Y Trichant is Foel Las, and this was derived from a number of sources including the Tithe map, Ordnance Survey Draft Surveyors map, Ordnance Survey One-Inch ‘Old Series’ map and the Ordnance Survey series of Six-Inch maps.
The full details for the
hill are:
Group: Mynydd Hiraethog
Name: Foel Las
Previously Listed
Name: Tre-pys-llygod West Top
OS 1:50,000 map: 116
Summit Height: 307.1m (converted to OSGM15)
Summit Grid
Reference: SH 88690 68624
Bwlch Height: 276.2m (converted to OSGM15)
Bwlch Grid
Reference: SH 88939 68659
Drop: 30.9m
Myrddyn Phillips (November 2019)
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