Mapping Mountains – Significant Name Changes – Yr Uchafion

Fronllwyd (SH 617 631)

There has been a Significant Name Change to a hill that is listed in the Yr Uchafion, with the drop and status of the hill confirmed by a level and staff line survey conducted by John Barnard, Graham Jackson and Myrddyn Phillips which took place on the 26^th May 2007, and with the summit height and its position confirmed by a Trimble GeoXH 6000 survey conducted by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams on the 6^th July 2019.

Fronllwyd (SH 617 631)

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

Yr Uchafion – Welsh hills at or above 500m in height that have 15m minimum drop.  The list is co-authored by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams, with the Introduction to the list appearing on Mapping Mountains on the 4^th November 2015 and an update relating to the list appearing on Mapping Mountains on the 19^th June 2019.

The hill is adjoined to the Glyderau 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 Afon Ogwen and the A5 road to its north-east and Llyn Padarn, Llyn Peris and the A4086 road towards its south-west, and has the town of Bethesda towards the north and the village of Llanberis towards the south-west.

The hill first made an appearance in a published hill list in 1940 when Ted Moss listed it as Carnedd y Filiast Point N.W. in his The Two-Thousands of Wales published by The Rucksack Club Journal.

When this hill was first included in the listing that later became known as Yr Uchafion and latterly as The Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru it was listed by the directional name of Carnedd y Filiast North-west Top with an accompanying note stating; Named from mountain to the South-east.

During my early hill listing I paid little regard to name placement on the map, or the meaning of names and to what feature the name was appropriately applied to.  Therefore if a hill was seemingly unnamed on the map I either invented a name or used a combination of a directional name for it.  This is not a practice that I now advocate as with time and inclination place-name information can be improved either by historic research and / or local enquiry.

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

It was during the compilation of the The Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru list that I first made place-name enquiries with local farmers, grazers and landowners, during this process there were many people who gave me an enormous amount of help, with one of these being Ieuan Wyn who at the time of my enquiries lived in Bethesda.  It was Ieuan who first told me that this hill is known as Fronllwyd or with the use of the definite article; Y Fronllwyd.  During subsequent enquiries this was substantiated by a number of local farmers, including Glyn Williams, Gwyn Thomas and William Williams.  The name of Fronllwyd also appears on contemporary Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer maps, however it is misspelt and appears as Fronllwydd.

The Trimble GeoXH 6000 gathering data at the summit of Fronllwyd

Therefore, the name this hill is now listed by in the The Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru is Fronllwyd and this was derived from local enquiry, with this name also appearing in a misspelt form on contemporary Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer maps.

The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Glyderau

Name:  Fronllwyd

Previously Listed Name:  Carnedd y Filiast North-west Top

OS 1:50,000 map:  115

Summit Height:  720.8m (converted to OSGM15)

Summit Grid Reference:  SH 61747 63161

Bwlch Height:  704.6m (relative to Trimble summit and line survey for drop)

Bwlch Grid Reference:  SH 61873 63018 (hand-held GPS from survey placement)

Drop:  16.1m (line survey)

For details on the summit survey of this hill

Myrddyn Phillips (October 2019)