Mapping Mountains – Significant Name Changes – Y Trichant – The 300m Hills of Wales

 

Pen Aran Hill (SO 137 888) 

There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill that is listed in the Y Trichant – The 300m Hills of Wales, with the summit height, bwlch height and their locations, the drop and status of the hill derived from LIDAR analysis and a subsequent Trimble GeoXH 6000 survey conducted by Myrddyn Phillips. 

Pen Aran Hill (SO 137 888)

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

Y Trichant – The 300m Hills of Wales.  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 13^th May 2017. 

Y Trichant - The 300m Hills of Wales by Myrddyn Phillips

The hill is adjoined to the Cilfaesty group of hills, which are situated in Mid and West Wales (Region B, Sub-Region B1), and it is positioned with minor roads to its north-west and south-east and the A489 road to its north-east, and has the village of Ceri (Kerry) towards the north-east.                     

The hill appeared in the original 300m Welsh P30 list on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website under the transposed name of Penarron, with an accompanying note stating; Name from buildings to the South.

Penarron

368m

SO138891

136

214

Name from buildings to the South.

 

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 transpose the name of a farm and use it for that of the hill.  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. 

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

After visiting the summit of this hill I called at Penarron farm where I met Ivor and Rhydian Powell who were encouraging three cows in to a trailer.  I volunteered my help and tapped one on its hind quarters, they were soon all safely in, more from the expertise of the two people I had just met rather than from the encouragement that I had given. 

Ivor and Rhydian Powell

I explained my interest in the hill and its name, and Ivor and then Rhydian told me that the adjacent and slightly lower field is known as the Pike and that the upper field where I had been surveying is known as the Long Field.  We spent a number of minutes talking about the hill but they needed to get away with the three cows, before doing so they told me the person who I should go and talk to was Phil Davies who was in the adjacent field cutting silage and who had farmed these hills all his adult life. 

Philip Davies

Therefore I drove back up the road, parked in the pull-in spot where I had left my car to visit the hill and went through the opposing open gate and down the field where Phil was in his tractor cutting great swathes of grass.  I waited for him to head my way and waved over, he soon stopped and we chatted for ten minutes of so.  Phil is aged 78 and this hill is a part of the land that he farms, he told me the names of the two opposing fields, the Pike and the Long Field and the Big Field for where we now were.  I asked him about the name of the hill and he said he knows it as Pen Aran Hill, with the composition of Pen Aran taken from the Ordnance Survey Six-Inch series of maps. 

Extract from the Ordnance Survey series of Six-Inch maps

Therefore, the name this hill is now listed by in the Y Trichant – The 300m Hills of Wales is Pen Aran Hill and this was derived from local enquiry. 

 

The full details for the hill are: 

Group:  Cilfaesty 

Name:  Pen Aran Hill 

Previously Listed Name:  Penarron 

OS 1:50,000 map:  136

Summit Height:  368.0m (converted to OSGM15, Trimble GeoXH 6000)

Summit Grid Reference:  SO 13710 88852 (Trimble GeoXH 6000) 

Bwlch Height:  324.6m (LIDAR) 

Bwlch Grid Reference:  SO 13561 88411 (LIDAR) 

Drop:  43.4m (Trimble GeoXH 6000 summit and LIDAR bwlch) 

Myrddyn Phillips (October 2021)