Mapping Mountains – Summit Relocations – The Fours – The 400m Hills of England

Standing Stone Hill (SD 950 303)

There has been a Summit Relocation 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 by an on-site Abney level survey conducted by Ronnie Bowron, which was initiated by Joe Nuttall who produced a summit analysis programme consisting of over 29,600 hills.

The criteria for the list that this summit relocation 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 listing of The Fours are three categories of sub hills, with this hill being included in the Double Sub-Four category, the criteria for which are all English hills at or above 390m and below 400m in height that have 20m or more and below 30m of drop.  The list is co-authored by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams and the 2nd edition of the booklet containing this list was published by Mapping Mountains Publications on the 24th April 2018.

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

The name the hill is listed by is Standing Stone Hill, and it is adjoined to the Pendle group of hills, which are situated in the Pennines of northern England (Region 36: The Southern Pennines), and it is positioned with minor roads to its north-east and south, and farther afield it has the A646 road to its south-west and the A6033 road to its east, and has the town of Hebden Bridge towards the south-east.

When the 2^nd edition of the The Fours – The 400m Hills of England was published by Mapping Mountains Publications in April 2018, this hill was not included but was provisionally listed with 20m of drop, based on the 398m summit spot height adjoined to a triangulation pillar and the 378m col spot height that appear on the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map.

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

These details were subsequently re-assessed against the mapping on the OS Maps website.  This is the replacement for OS Get-a-map and until recent times had contours at 5m intervals which were proving consistently more accurate compared to the 5m contours that sometimes appear on the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map and used to appear on the online Vector Map Local.  This mapping is digitally updated and the position of the 378m spot height has been checked against the col contours which were between 375m – 380m, resulting in an estimated c 377m col height.

Extract from the OS Maps website

The details for this hill in the spreadsheet produced by Joe Nuttall’s summit analysis programme have now been checked on-site by Ronnie Bowron, who conducted an Abney level survey, resulting in the summit of this hill being positioned at SD 95042 30320 with an estimated summit height of c 399m.

The above detail comes within the parameters of the Summit Relocations used within this page heading, these parameters are:

The term Summit Relocations applies when the hill’s high point is in a different field, or where a number of potential summit positions are within close proximity and the highest point is not where previously given, or when it is positioned to a different feature such as in a conifer plantation, or when the high point of the hill is placed within a different map contour, or when natural ground or the natural and intact summit of a hill is confirmed compared to a higher point such as a raised field boundary that is judged to be a relatively recent man-made construct, or a relocation of approximately 100 metres or more in distance from either the position of a map spot height or from where the summit of the hill was previously thought to exist.

Therefore, the listed summit height of this hill is now c 399m and its new position is SD 95042 30320, this position is not given a spot height on contemporary Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger and 1:25,000 Explorer maps and is approximately 60 metres north-westward from where the previously listed summit is positioned.

The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Pendle

Name:  Standing Stone Hill

OS 1:50,000 map:  103

Summit Height:  c 399m (relative to triangulation pillar)

Summit Grid Reference (new position):  SD 95042 30320 (hand-held GPS)

Col Height:  c 377m (interpolation)

Col Grid Reference:  SD 94516 30295 (interpolation)

Drop:  c 22m (relative to triangulation pillar summit and interpolated col)

Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams (December 2020)