Mapping Mountains – Significant Height Revisions – The Fours – The 400m Hills of England

Weather Hill (NY 929 391) 

There has been a Significant Height Revision to a hill that is listed in the The Fours – The 400m Hills of England, with the summit height, col height and their locations, the drop and status of the hill prompted by Joe Nuttall who produced a summit analysis programme using LIDAR, and then confirmed by LIDAR analysis conducted by Myrddyn Phillips. 

LIDAR image of Weather Hill (NY 929 391)

The criteria for the list this height revision affects are:

The Fours – The 400m Hills of England.  English hills at or above 400m and below 500m in height that have 30m minimum drop, accompanying the main list are three categories of sub hills, with this hill being included in the 400m Sub-Four category, the criteria for which are all English hills at or above 400m and below 500m in height that have 20m or more and below 30m of drop.  The list is co-authored by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams and the 2^nd edition of the booklet containing this list was published by Mapping Mountains Publications on the 24^th April 2018.

The Fours - The 400m Hills of England by Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams

The name the hill is listed by is Weather Hill and it is adjoined to the Burnhope Seat group of hills (Region 35, Section 35A: The Northern Pennines), and it is positioned with minor roads to its north, west and east, and the A689 road to its south, and has the town of Stanhope towards the east.

When the 2^nd edition of the The Fours – The 400m Hills of England was published by Mapping Mountains Publications in April 2018, this hill was not included in the accompanying sub list, as it was considered not to meet the criteria used for this sub category, based on the hill being a part of a quarry and therefore contemporary Ordnance Survey maps do not show any meaningful contours. 

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

One of the mapping resources now available online is the WalkLakes website which hosts an interactive map originated from the Ordnance Survey Open Data programme.  This map has many spot heights not on other publicly available maps and for this hill a 408m spot height is given on its summit area. 

Extract from the interactive mapping hosted on the WalkLakes 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 Weather Hill (NY 929 391)

LIDAR analysis gives this hill a summit height of 410.0m positioned at NY 92906 39126 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, the new listed summit height of this hill is 410.0m and this was derived from LIDAR analysis, this is 2.0m higher than the 408m spot height that appears on the interactive mapping hosted on the WalkLakes website. 

 

The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Burnhope Seat

Name:  Weather Hill

OS 1:50,000 map:  91, 92

Summit Height (New Height):  410.0m (LIDAR)

Summit Grid Reference:  NY 92906 39126 (LIDAR)

Col Height:  389.0m (LIDAR)

Col Grid Reference:  NY 93281 39255 (LIDAR)

Drop:  21.0m (LIDAR)

 

Our thanks to Ronnie Bowron for bringing the details of this hill to our attention.

Myrddyn Phillips and Aled Williams (November 2022)