Mapping Mountains – Significant Height Revisions – 30-99m Twmpau and Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales

Dinas Powys (ST 148 722)

There has been a Significant Height Revision to a hill that is now listed in the 30-99m Twmpau and Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales, with the summit height, bwlch height and their locations, the drop, dominance and status of the hill confirmed by LIDAR analysis conducted by Myrddyn Phillips.

LIDAR image of Dinas Powys (ST 148 722)

The criteria for the two listings that this height revision applies to are:

30-99m Twmpau - Welsh hills at or above 30m and below 100m in height with 30m minimum drop, with an accompanying sub list entitled the 30-99m Sub-Twmpau with the criteria for this sub category being all Welsh hills at or above 30m and below 100m 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.

Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales - Welsh P30 hills whose prominence  equal or exceed half that of their absolute height.  With the criteria for Lesser Dominant status being those additional Welsh P30 hills whose prominence is between one third and half that of their absolute height, with the Introduction to the Mapping Mountains publication of this list appearing on the 3^rd December 2015.

The name the hill is listed by is Dinas Powys and it is adjoined to the Bro Morgannwg group of hills, which are situated in the southern part of South Wales (Region C, Sub-Region C2), and it is encircled by a number of A roads, with the A4232 to its north, the A4050 to its west, the A4231 towards its south and the A4055 to its east, and has the town of Y Barri (Barry) to the south-west and the town of Penarth towards the east.

When the original 30-99m height band of Welsh P30 hills were published on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website this hill was included in the Hills to be surveyed sub list that accompanied the main P30 list, as it did not meet the criteria then used in the main P30 list. 

When the sub list was standardised, and interpolated heights and drop values also included the details for this hill were re-evaluated and it was listed with an estimated c 29m of drop based on a c 62m interpolated summit height and the 33m spot height that appears at the bwlch on Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer maps which for this area has contours at 5m intervals.

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

The details for this hill were re-examined when the Ordnance Survey Vector Map Local hosted on the Geograph website and which is entitled the Interactive Coverage Map became available online.  This mapping has many spot heights not on other publicly available Ordnance Survey maps.

Extract from the Ordnance Survey Vector Map Local

The details for this hill were also re-assessed when the OS Maps website became available online.  This is the replacement for OS Get-a-map and has contours at 5m intervals which are proving consistently more accurate compared to the 5m contours that sometimes appear on Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer maps and the online Vector Map Local.  These re-assessments resulted in the hill being listed with c 30m of drop with the interpolated summit height increasing from c 62m to c 63m.

Extract from the OS Maps website

However, it was not until LIDAR became available that the details for this hill could be accurately re-assessed.  The LIDAR (Light Detection & Ranging) technique produced highly accurate height data that is now freely available for much of England and Wales.

LIDAR summit image of Dinas Powis

The summit height produced by LIDAR analysis is 69.4m and this comes within the parameters of the Significant Height Revisions used within this page heading, these parameters are:

The term Significant Height Revisions applies to any listed hill whose interpolated height and Ordnance Survey or Harvey map summit spot height has a 2m or more discrepancy when compared to the survey result produced by the Trimble GeoXH 6000 or analysis of data produced via LIDAR, also included are hills whose summit map data is missing an uppermost ring contour when compared to the data produced by the Trimble or by LIDAR analysis.

Therefore, this hill’s new listed summit height is 69.4m and this was derived from LIDAR analysis, this is 6.4m higher than the previous estimated summit height of c 63m and 9.4m higher than the uppermost 60m ring contour on contemporary Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger and 1:25,000 Explorer maps, but it is in accordance with the uppermost 65m ring contour on the OS Maps website.

ills of Wales, and are reproduced below@

The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Bro Morgannwg

Name:  Dinas Powys

OS 1:50,000 map:  171

Summit Height (New Height):  69.4m (LIDAR)

Summit Grid Reference:  ST 14823 72225 (LIDAR)

Bwlch Height:  33.6m (LIDAR)

Bwlch Grid Reference:  ST 14757 72333 (LIDAR)

Drop:  35.8m (LIDAR)

Dominance:  51.57% (LIDAR)

Myrddyn Phillips (November 2019)