The Relative Hills Society
(RHSoc) recently invited me to be guest speaker at their annual dinner. My talk lasted for 35 minutes and the text to
the basis of this appears below:
Welsh Place-Name
Research
Firstly, I would like to thank Rick and RHSoc
for inviting me to be guest speaker at your annual dinner. I would also like to express my thanks to
Barry for inviting me to accompany members of the Society on the walk to Upper
Park earlier today, and also congratulations to Barry for getting permission to
do so from Powis Estate. It’s been a
very enjoyable day with an excellent meal in good company this evening, and a
good walk up Upper Park in good company in lovely weather this afternoon, so
I’m afraid for the next 30 minutes or so, it’s going to be all downhill from
here!
When Rick contacted me
we briefly touched upon the subject matter for my talk and Rick suggested Welsh
place-name research. Over the next
couple of days I considered this and wondered whether to expand the talk to include
how I got into hill bagging, how this evolved into surveying, hill compilation
and then place-name research. Every two
days or so for the next couple of weeks I wandered around my bungalow speaking
to myself, which I’m prone to do anyway, practicing my talk. The first time I did this, I got about ¾ of
the way through what I thought I should say, looked at my watch and 55 minutes
had expired, I thought everyone would be in the bar waaaay before I had
finished! However, I kept practicing and
eventually got the talk down to a manageable 30 minutes. But to do so I had to literally whizz through
everything. Because of this I thought
let’s just pick one topic, I can still briefly mention the hill bagging,
surveying and list compilation, but concentrating on one subject will allow
time to explain and give detail where necessary, so I’m going to go back to
what Rick first suggested and that is Welsh place-name research.
Part
One: The fragile nature of language
The context of my talk will relate purely to
Welsh hills and how using appropriate names can improve the information within our
hill lists. I’m going to split the talk
into four parts; the first part concerns itself with the language.
I’d like to take you back to 2004; this is when
my dad died. Shortly after his death I
started looking into my family history and for the next 18 months conducted
extensive family research. I’m sure
there are others here tonight that have done likewise. I found it a fascinating subject and learnt
so much that I did not know beforehand.
One of the things I found was that my great great grandfather as well as
speaking English, could also speak Welsh.
This was a revelation for me, as although I knew my grandparents; my
father’s mother and father lived in Welshpool; the town where I was born and
still live, I did not know where my father’s family came from, they could have
come from the part of Wales where I still live, or from another part, or in
fact from England, Scotland or Ireland, I just did not know.
My great great grandfather married a woman from
Shropshire; my great great grandmother, they had eight or nine children as was
the average in the mid-1800s. I presume
that as their mother could only speak English all the children were brought up
speaking just this one language, resulting in Welsh as a language being lost
from my family in one generation. This
is how fragile language can be.
I’m now going to take this scenario of how
fragile language can be and place it firmly in a hill context and take you to
the hill range known as Mynydd Epynt, which is positioned just to the
south-west of Builth Wells. The highest
hill of this range is also known as Mynydd Epynt and as it is listed as a
Marilyn, I’m sure many here this evening would have visited it. It can be relatively easily visited from the
mountain road that passes from Builth Welsh to Brecon via Upper Chapel. Toward the top of this road is a large
parking area, come viewing spot. You can
then walk across the public road and scamper up the paved section of road that
follows the ridge before veering off to the right to bag the summit, before
scampering back down the paved road. I
use the word scamper wisely, as the majority of this hill range now has
restricted access because in 1939 the Military of Defence (MOD) took this land
over. By doing so 54 families were
evicted, they had little notice of eviction and little compensation. In the main these families were farmers and
Welsh speakers. This resulted in Welsh
as a language being lost overnight from the bulk of this hill range and the use
of the language being pushed approximately 14 miles further westward. This is how fragile language can be.
Again, the underlying theme to my talk relates
to how using an appropriate name for a hill can improve the information within
a hill list. By doing so it incorporates
the rich heritage of our landscape and this includes the use of the Welsh
language, which as just touched upon can be fragile in nature. Using invented names for hills ignores this
rich heritage and for an upcoming part of my talk I will concentrate on how
some list authors are prone to use invented names for hills. But before that I would like to explain how I
got in to Welsh place-name research.
Part Two:
Beginning hill bagging, surveying, listing and researching hill names
The second part of my talk will touch upon how I
started hill bagging, surveying, hill listing and how this evolved in to
place-name research.
I started hill bagging in 1988 and soon bought
Terry Marsh’s 600-Metre Summits of Wales
guidebook. Within which was a main list
and accompanying sub list totalling 222 hills.
During the following year of 1989, I set myself the challenge of
completing an ascent of all of these hills in the calendar year. I completed this on the 222nd day
of the year atop Crib Goch, and by doing so raised £1000 for charity.
In late 1989 Cicerone Press published the first
of two books authored by John and Anne Nuttall; The Mountains of England and Wales, Volume 1 Wales. This guidebook listed the 2,000ft mountains
of Wales and it led my hill bagging for many years to come. During my 5th round of these hills
I was out bagging four or five individual hills, quickly visiting one before
driving to the next. My last hill of the
day was Moel y Cerrig Duon, which is positioned above Bwlch y Groes; Wales’
second highest public road. As I
descended from this hill toward my car which was parked in the large gravelled
area beside the top of the road, two people approached the parking area having
come down from the main Aran ridge.
Walking toward them I noticed a copy of the Nuttall’s Welsh guide in the
boot of their car. One of them; Dewi
Jones, who until recent years posted on the RHB forum, told me he had found a
new hill not in the Nuttalls list. This
hill had been surveyed my Dewi, who had drilled a hole in his walking staff at
a 1m height to affix a spirit level and devised an ingenious mirror system for
horizontal alignment. When reaching the
col Dewi placed the bottom of the staff at the designated spot, sited across
the spirit level and then walked to where he had sited, before repeating the
process. The new hill Dewi had found was
subsequently line surveyed by two of his friends; Harold Morris and Tudur
Owen. The hill was later confirmed as a
new addition to their list by the Nuttall’s and it has now been Trimbled. The Nuttall’s listed this hill by an invented
name using a directional component; Cnicht North Top. When making local place-name enquiries two
names are given for this hill; Cnicht Bach and Cnichyn, the latter uses a
diminutive. All one has to do is ask
locally and in all probability an appropriate name will be given for the
respective hill. Local enquiry is important
and I will come back to this later in my talk.
The encounter with Dewi led directly to me surveying
hills, as I wondered if any more new Welsh Nuttalls awaited discovery. I soon contacted a skilled craftsman named
Simon Pendrell who coincidentally lived just outside of Croesor at the base of
Cnicht. Simon made me two measuring
staffs, the last splitting in to four via three brass screw fittings and
therefore easily fitting in to a day rucksack.
I then made a list of bumps to survey and over the next two years or so
surveyed over 160 Welsh hills for Nuttall status, and by doing so a number of
new Welsh Nuttalls entered the list.
My hill bagging continued with the Nuttall’s
list and I eventually set myself the challenge of completing an ascent of all
the Welsh 2,000fters in each month of the year, this entails a minimum of 12 rounds
of the Welsh Nuttalls. I completed this
in March 2002 on top of Yr Wyddfa in glorious weather with about 18 people
present, including Rob. We sat just
under the trig pillar for 90 minutes or so, drinking Cava whilst eating
strawberries in beautiful sunshine; amazing conditions considering it was
March.
By this time I had moved in to care for my
father, he was aged 50 when I was born, therefore was old enough to be my
grandfather. Over the last two years of
his life he needed a tremendous amount of care and to an extent my life was
taken over. To keep myself sane I
started compiling hill lists. Some of my
first list compilations included the Irish 500m P30s now co-authored with
Michael Dewey, the Irish 400m P30s published without any consultation with me,
by Mountain Views. I then concentrated
on the Welsh P30s; conceiving eleven lists comprising the 100m height bands
with the 30-99m P30s as the lowest and the 1,000m P30s as the highest, with
only the lists of hills below 500m submitted for publication as the Welsh
Hewitts and Deweys had already been published.
Another list I compiled was the English 400m P30s now co-authored with
Aled Williams and named The Fours.
I next compiled a Welsh 500m P15 list,
comprising all hills in Wales at or above 500m all the way up to Yr Wyddfa,
there are over 63o qualifying hills.
This list is now co-authored with Aled and named The Welsh
Highlands. By using a 15m minimum drop
criterion I found that many of the smaller prominence hills had no name on the
map. I asked myself two questions. One; does the hill have a name? Two; if it does, how do I find it?
At this stage I was dealing with the Rhinogydd
range of hills. This is a superb
mountain range situated in the west of Wales, positioned north of Barmouth and
south of Trawsfynydd. The particular
hill I was looking at had no name on the map.
I wondered if I contacted the people at the farm positioned in the high
valley below the hill whether they would know a name for it. I contacted them and they gave me a
name. I thought that’s a pretty good
strike rate; one enquiry and one name given and a name that had never appeared
on any Ordnance Survey map.
Over the next 18–24 months I contacted over 500
people. In the main these were farmers,
but they also included shepherds, land owners, estate workers, gamekeepers,
estate owners, local historians and academics.
I would make initial contact by phone late in the morning and continue
this during the afternoon, scribbling all information given me. I would write all these details in the
evening and following morning, before continuing my phone calls. This was years before I had a laptop, so all
information was hand written. I covered all
hill ranges in Wales that are above 500m in height, except ironically for three
that are close to where I live; Beacon Hill, Pegwn Mawr and Fforest Glud. Aled has now conducted extensive research in
to names for the hills in these areas.
He has also typed all of the information I gathered and converted it to
PDF format, so thankfully all of these enquiries are now backed-up. What I found was a mass of information with
many names given me that have never appeared on any Ordnance Survey map. But I also found so much more. I realised how hospitable the farming
community are and also how knowledgeable they are for the land they work. How generous this community is with imparting
the knowledge they have. I was also told
about the naming policies at play for land in Wales, these in the main are the
cynefin, ffridd and field names which I will deal with in the last part of this
talk.
Although I now rarely phone farmers, these
enquiries are continuing by visiting farms during hill walks. One result of these enquiries is that I now
realise how inappropriate it is for a hill list compiler to invent a name for a
hill and how this can easily be perpetuated in its use by hill baggers. At this point I need to hold my hand up and
say I am as guilty as anyone for inventing names for hills, as I did this on
many an occasion when compiling the Welsh P30s.
I had the time of my life using all manner of invented names,
transposing farm names or stream names and putting Pen, Bryn or Moel in front
of them, using directional components for names whenever I felt like it. I did this for convenience; however I now
understand all are wholly inappropriate.
Part
Three: List compilers using invented names
Before exploring how some hill list authors are
prone to invent names for hills and why this is done, I would like to
concentrate on names for hills that appear on maps. Let’s say we have a hill on an Ordnance
Survey map that has a name under it.
This same name has appeared for this hill in every past publication of
this map and also all past series of maps.
Because of this I would refer to this map name as an established
name. However, have you ever asked
yourselve where such names originate from?
In all probability this name originated from the local community beside
the hill. Now, let us imagine there is
an adjacent hill to our established named hill, but this hill is unnamed on the
map. If the local community or better
still the local farmer whose land the summit of the hill is situated on, is
asked whether there is a name for this hill, the probability is that an
appropriate name would be given for it.
For me, the locally known name and the established name have as much
relevance and importance as one another as their originating source is the
same, and that is from the local community beside the hill.
When hill list author’s deal with the
information within their compilation they can be faced with many hundreds, if
not thousands of qualifying hills. This
can be daunting and therefore anyone can understand why when faced with such
numbers of hills a list compiler resorts to using invented names. The main reason is one of convenience,
however by doing so we as hill baggers are prone to then perpetuate the use of
this invented name and this can then so easily be reproduced online via
different sources and can, on occasion, be found on online mapping. There are examples of names I invented for
hills when I originated the Welsh P30s that were duplicated by the author of
the Tumps and listed as such in this list.
These same hills are now known by hill baggers by these invented names
and have appeared in many online sources and have found their way onto some
online mapping. One perpetuates the
other and all are inappropriate.
I would like to now give two examples how a list
compiler can supplant, transpose or use a directional component within a hill
name. All are inappropriate.
The first example involves a hill that has no
name next to it on contemporary Ordnance Survey maps, but a farm that is
relatively close to it does have a name, and this name sounds a bit hilly and
is the nearest name to the summit of the hill on the map. In this example the list compiler transposes
the name of the farm for that of the hill.
As well as this being an invented name for the hill which has not been
substantiated either from historical or local usage, the farm in this instance
has no association with this particular hill, in fact the land where the hill
is situated belongs to a farm that is much farther away. The end result is the use of an inappropriate
name for the hill, with this then probably perpetuated by the hill bagging
community.
The second example is where a hill list compiler
supplants a name for a hill and uses a directional component.
We have two hills aligned north to south of one
another. The northerly is the higher but
has no map name, whilst the southerly is the lower but does have a map
name. Let’s say the southerly, lower
hill is named Foel Fawr. There is at
least one hill list author who faced with this scenario prioritises the higher
seemingly unnamed hill for the name that appears on the map and therefore
supplants the name of Foel Fawr for the higher hill. They then use a directional component for the
lower hill in relation to the newly named higher hill, and name the lower hill
as Foel Fawr South Top. This results in
the use of two inappropriate hill names.
All one has to do is contact the local farmer whose land the northerly
higher hill is on and in all probability an appropriate name for it will be
forthcoming, this is not difficult to do and the end result is that each hill is
listed by an appropriate name.
Part Four:
Naming policies within Wales
The fourth and last part of my talk concentrates
on the naming policy in use in Wales for land where the hill is
positioned. This naming policy has been
used for centuries and its rich heritage is in contrast with how many list
authors deal with Welsh hills when they use invented names.
I’d like to take you to one of Wales’ better
hill ridges; Crib Nantlle, the Nantlle ridge.
Dependent upon criteria used this ridge consists of seven 2,000fters and
is positioned above the small community of Nantlle. I know this community well as my mother lived
in Nantlle until 2012 when she died, and my brother has since bought her house,
so I’ve been visiting Nantlle since the mid-1990s.
In the central part of Crib Nantlle is a hill
with a large stone tower on top. This I
believe was built by the quarrymen of Dyffryn Nantlle to celebrate Queen
Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. On Ordnance
Survey maps the name Mynydd Tal y Mignedd appears just under the summit of this
hill and in every hill list I know, it is this name that is given the
hill. I’m sure everyone here this
evening knows that the word Mynydd translates in to English as mountain and
therefore the name of Mynydd Tal y Mignedd implies that this is the name of the
hill; however it is not an individual hill name, it is a land name.
Below this hill in Dyffryn Nantlle is the farm
of Tal-y-mignedd uchaf; the higher and Tal-y-mignedd isaf; the lower. The name of Mynydd Tal y Mignedd relates to
the mynydd, or mountain land adjoined to the farm of Tal-y-mignedd. In Welsh this is known as the cynefin. This word is given to apportioned land
usually comprising mountain or moor and which is adjoined to a specific
farm. The relationship between the
cynefin and a specific farm can go back centuries. In English the equivalent of the cynefin is
the sheepwalk, these are agricultural terms.
The word sheepwalk still appears on Ordnance Survey maps and can be
spotted in hill country. The basis of
the term cynefin, or sheepwalk, is the mountain land given over for the
specific farm’s sheep to graze.
The opposing valley to Dyffryn Nantlle is Cwm
Pennant, when visiting the farms in this valley and documenting the names the
farmers gave me for the hills, I pointed toward the hill with the large stone
tower on top and the predominant name given was Mynydd Blaen Pennant. Again, this is not an individual hill name
but a land name and relates to the farm of Blaen Pennant, which is at the head
of Cwm Pennant and when I made these enquiries I was told although still
operating as a farm it was now empty.
Similar to the land adjoined to the farm of Tal-y-mignedd; which is
known as Mynydd Tal y Mignedd, this again is the land adjoined to the farm of
Blaen Pennant; and is known as Mynydd Blaen Pennant. With the land adjoined to each farm meeting
at the watershed on the ridge crest.
If we now visit the penultimate 2,000fter to the
north-east on this ridge, the map has the name of Mynydd Drws y Coed in broad
letters adjacent to the summit of this hill.
This is the name that the majority, if not all list compilers have used
for this hill, purely because it is the nearest name on the map to its
summit. If you look in the valley below
you’ll see the farm of Drws-y-coed. When
I contacted the old farmer at Drws-y-coed they explained where the land
boundary of the farm went to and confirmed that again this is not an individual
hill name, it is a land name dealing with the apportioned mynydd, or mountain
land of Drws-y-coed farm. The boundary
for this mountain land goes up to a collapsed wall that butts up against the
cliff face, when standing beside this wall the summit of the hill is a good few
metres on the other side, meaning that the land named Mynydd Drws y Coed
doesn’t even take in the summit of this hill.
The highest hill on Crib Nantlle is listed as a
Marilyn, so I’m sure many here this evening would have visited it. It is listed in the Marilyns as it is in just
about every other hill list by the name of Craig Cwm Silyn. This name appears near the summit of this
hill on contemporary Ordnance Survey maps, but it is not the hill name, it is
the name of one of the crags on the northerly part of the hill. When I contacted the farmers in both Dyffryn
Nantlle and Cwm Pennant the pre-dominant name given me for this hill was Craig
Las. This is the whole mountain that
also takes in the P20 summit named as Garnedd Goch on the map. The local farmers know this as one mountain,
which is not surprising as few people outside of our community of hill listers
and baggers fully understand the relevance of prominence. Interestingly, when you look at the Ordnance
Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map, there’s a stream that heads down from the upper
part of this hill toward Dyffryn Nantlle that is named as Afon Craig Las, the
implication being that its source is a hill or crag known as Craig Las.
If we now concentrate on the land below the
mountain and moor, this is mixed land comprising heath, high pasture and
woodland. This is the land that takes in
the ffridd. When examining an Ordnance
Survey map you can find many names that are prefixed with the word Ffridd. The ffridd, or ffriddoedd for its plural, is
again a land name and not necessarily an individual hill name. One of the hills that John, Graham and I
surveyed many years ago is named in the Dewey list as Ffridd Allt yr
Llwyd. This is not necessarily the hill
name, it is a land name. The ffridd usually
comprises bounded land, with is enclosed either by fences or walls. There are many hills listed in the 400m
height band; the Pedwarau and the 300m height band; the Trichant, that appear
under a name that is prefixed with the word ffridd, again this is the mixed
land comprising heath, high pasture and woodland. For our purposes as list compilers and hill
baggers it is appropriate to use these names taking in the cynefin and ffridd
if no appropriate individual hill name is forthcoming.
We are now in the age where every P30 in Britain
is listed; these are the Tumps and the height band that is of most interest
when dealing with Welsh hill names is the lower heighted hills comprising many
of these P30s. The reason why is simple;
many of these lower heighted hills do not have individual hill names, which is
at contrast to the higher hills, which do.
The reason for this is that few people outside of our community of
listers and hill baggers view these as separate hills. I seldom now phone farmers, but when on a
walk passing through a farmyard I will usually knock on the front door. After I’ve introduced myself to the farmer
and explained my interest in hill names, I point toward the hill and ask if they
know a name for it. I have been met by
many a quizzical smile and a reply asking ‘what hill is that then?’ I point
again saying ‘that one, up there’, ‘well now, that’s not a hill, is it’ has
come the reply. ‘That’s just a field’.
We view these lower heighted hills as individual
hills, which is not surprising as we consider ourselves hill baggers who follow
hill lists. However, few people outside
of our community consider these as individual hills, many are just high fields
and some are not even very high. For the
farming community these lower heighted hills are just grazing fields and as
such many do not have individual names.
Remember where names for hills originate from, if the rich tapestry of
heritage is to be respected they do not originate with the list author, unless
they have invented a name, they originate from the local community and as many
of these lower heighted hills do not possess an individual name, it is
appropriate for us as hill listers and baggers to use the name of the land
where the summit of the hill is situated.
This policy follows that of the cynefin and ffridd and for these lower
heighted hills we now encounter what is known as a field name, the naming
policies for each in turn; that of the cynefin, ffridd and now field names have
been in place in Wales for centuries.
The field names documented for Wales during the 1800s can be found on
the Tithe map. These are hosted by the
National Library of Wales and are available online. The field boundaries at the time of the Tithe
can be compared to contemporary field boundaries on Ordnance Survey 1:25,000
maps, each for the former has an individual number, once the field where the
summit of the hill is found the apportionments can be accessed, these give the
name of the landowner, tenant farmer, in many instances the acreage of the
field, its use be it pasture or arable and importantly its name.
These naming policies including the cynefin,
ffridd and field names have left us a rich heritage originated by the people
who live beside the respective hill and work the land where the summit is
situated. This heritage gives us the
names of individual hills and the land where summits are situated. This is also our heritage that we as listers
and baggers can use. By doing so this
respects where names originate from and by using these it dispenses with the
notion of using invented names and relies upon the knowledge of the people who
have been giving names to hills and land for many centuries. In the main this is the farming community. In relation to hill and land names this
community knows so much more than our community of hill listers and
baggers. We can communicate with the
farming community who have given our hills their names, by doing so we can
learn from and respect the knowledge they have and by using this knowledge we
can improve the information within the hill lists we use.
I’ve really enjoyed giving this evening’s talk
and I hope you have also enjoyed it.
Thank you.
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