Mapping Mountains – Significant Name Changes – Y Pellennig - The Remotest Hills of Wales, Yr Uchafion and 700m Twmpau

Trwsgl (SH 663 679)

There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill that is listed in the Y Pellennig - The Remotest Hills of Wales, Welsh Highlands - Uchafion Cymru and the 700m Twmpau, with the summit height, bwlch height and their locations, the drop and status of the hill derived from a Trimble GeoXH 6000 survey conducted by Myrddyn Phillips.

Trwsgl (SH 664 679)

The criteria for the three listings that this name change affects are:

Y Pellennig – The Remotest Hills of Wales - Welsh hills whose summit is at least 2.5km from the nearest paved public road and the hill has 15m minimum drop.  The list is co-authored by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams and is available as adownloadable e-booklet and print-booklet version on Mapping Mountains Publications with the up-to-date master list available to download on the Mapping Mountains site in Google Doc format.

Y Pellennig - The Remotest Hills of Wales by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams

Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru – Welsh hills at or above 500m in height with 15m minimum drop, with an accompanying sub list entitled the Welsh Highland Subs, the criteria for which is all Welsh hills at or above 500m in height with 10m or more and below 15m of drop.  This list is authored by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams with the Introduction to the list published on Mapping Mountains in November 2015 and the latest update relating to the list published on Mapping Mountains in January 2023.

Welsh Highlands - Uchafion Cymru by Aled Williams and Myrddyn Phillips

700m Twmpau - Welsh hills at or above 700m and below 800m in height with 30m minimum drop, with an accompanying sub list entitled the 700m Sub-Twmpau with the criteria for this sub category being all Welsh hills at or above 700m and below 800m 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.  The list is authored by Myrddyn Phillips and is available to download in Google Doc format from Mapping Mountains.

700m Twmpau by Myrddyn Phillips

The hill is adjoined to the Carnedd Llywelyn group of hills, which are situated in the north-western part of North Wales (Region A, Sub-Region A1), and it is positioned with the A55 road to its north-west and the A5 road to its south-west, and has the town of Bethesda towards the west south-west.

This hill was first listed by Arthur St George Walsh in his late 1920’s unpublished compilation to The 2000-footers of England and Wales, and first made an appearance in a published hill list in the 1940 Rucksack Club Journal in Ted Moss’s list to The-Two Thousands of Wales.  These early listings included this hill under the composition of Y Drosgl and Drosgl respectively, both followed the composition of the name that appeared on maps of the day.

The changes to the composition of the name of this hill on Ordnance Survey and Bartholomew maps are detailed below:

OS 1816 Draft Surveyors Map:  Y Trwsgol

OS 1841 One-Inch ‘Old Series’ Map:  Y Drosgl

OS 1888 Six-Inch Map:  Drosgol

OS 1901 Six-Inch Map:  Drosgl

Bartholomew 1920’s Half-Inch:  Y Drosgl

Extract from the 1816 Ordnance Survey Draft Surveyors Map

Hill list authors are prone to accept the name given the hill on the map of the day, without further enquiries being made.  However, as with numerical data where there are now independent surveyors producing accurate heights for hills that are fed in to hill lists, there are also people undertaking extensive place-name research that produce more appropriate names for hills than those currently in use and these are also fed in to hill lists.  This research is based on local enquiry and historical documentation, and as with accurate surveyed heights that improve data within listings, place-name research does likewise.

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

In the case of this hill it was Aled Williams who conducted extensive local enquiries with the people who work the land where this hill is situated and whose families have lived in this area for generations.  During this research he found that the preferred pronunciation of the name of this hill is Trwsgl, which favours that first documented by the Ordnance Survey with the variation that the definite article ‘Y’ has been dropped.

This hill has subsequently been listed under the name of Trwsgl in the Y Pellennig – The Remotest Hills of Wales (Europeaklist, Haroldstreet, v-g.me and Mapping Mountains 2015) with the following explanation appearing in the booklet version of the list:

Names given for the hills in this list follow correct Welsh usage and are taken from a variety of sources, not just the paper and online mapping produced by the Ordnance Survey.  OS maps of Wales are not always correct in the naming of a hill, or may give a spelling that does not conform to correct Welsh usage.  Importantly, if no name has been discovered for a hill from any source, it is referred to as Pt. xxm (Pt. for ‘Point’ or ‘Pwynt’), using the generally accepted convention, rather than making up a bogus name for which there is no historical or local evidence of use.

An example of this thoughtful naming policy is highlighted by the 757m hill at grid reference SH 663 679, which is listed in this booklet as ‘Trwsgl’.  The hill appears under the name ‘Drosgl’ in the Welsh Nuttalls and Hewitts hill lists respectively, following the composition of the name that appears on contemporary OS maps.  The translation of this name into English is rendered as ‘rough land’ and both trosgl (y drosgl) and trwsgl are accepted variations of the same adjective.  However, ‘Trwsgl’ was the form originally recorded for this hill by the OS in 1816 and extensive research conducted for this listing found that this is still the most used form locally.  We believe that instances like this enrich the listing and provide an element of historical interest to the publication.

Therefore, the name this hill is now listed by in the Y Pellennig - The Remotest Hills of Wales, Welsh Highlands - Uchafion Cymru and the 700m Twmpau is Trwsgl and its preferred pronunciation was derived from local enquiry.

The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Carnedd Llywelyn

Name:  Trwsgl

Previously Listed Name:  Drosgl

 

OS 1:50,000 map:  115

Summit Height:  756.9m (converted to OSGM15)

Summit Grid Reference:  SH 66387 67984 

 

Bwlch Height:  720.3m (converted to OSGM15)

Bwlch Grid Reference:  SH 66787 67818

Drop:  36.6m

Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams (June 2016)